Suad Amiry is a writer and an architect. She is the author of six works of nonfiction, including Sharon and My Mother-in-Law y Golda Slept Here. Amiry received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and is the founder of the RIWAQ Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah, where she lives. Based on a true story, Mother of Strangers (Pantheon) follows the daily lives of two Jaffa teenagers: Subhi, a 15-year-old mechanic, and Shams, the 13-year-old student he hopes to marry one day. But it’s also a story about Jaffa, the “Mother of Strangers,” a prosperous and cosmopolitan port city full of improbable characters and welcoming to outsiders; it’s a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians live peacefully together. But once the bombardment of the city begins in April 1948, Jaffa becomes unrecognizable as neighborhoods are flattened, families are removed from their homes and separated, and those who remain are in constant danger of arrest and incarceration. Mother of Strangers is a devastating account of a key moment in the history of the Middle East that marked the beginning of the end of Palestine. Jaffa was irrevocably changed, and Subhi and Shams would never see each other again.