RaveThe Rumpus\"This gentle telling of a raucous history—jostled by its many personalities and much geopolitical discord—begins in March of 1963 with the family’s matriarch, Salma, in Nablus, a city in the area presently known as the West Bank … The book moves forward in time and across space, reaching all the way to Salma’s pregnant great-granddaughter Manar in 2014, in Jaffa. These perspectives touch back on each other through small details, fashioning a collective, familial history. One character’s revelations illuminate the life of another … Alyan’s talent is immediately apparent in her exquisitely detailed scenes and the complex ways her characters relate to one another.\
Roy Scranton
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksWar Porn isn’t easy to comprehend, but it isn’t easy to put down either ... Scranton, both in this new book and in his nonfiction calls on readers to own up to the choices they’ve made, to the history we share — to care for each other and refuse to draw artificial lines. There is enough to fracture us — war, the changing climate, death.