



1 / 5Chantel Acevedo’s Cages: A Novel follows Felix, a zookeeper in 1960s Cuba who risks everything for an illicit affair with a coworker. Spanning three decades – from Felix’s exile in London to his final years in AIDS-era Miami – and told through the voices of those who knew him, this dazzling mosaic explores forbidden love, family dynamics, and the complicated nature of truth. Saleem Haddad’s Floodlines: A Novel is a multigenerational tale of art, exile, memory, and the enduring legacies of war. In the summer of 2014, three long-estranged Iraqi British sisters are pulled back into each other’s orbit by the rediscovery of their late father’s long-lost paintings. As buried memories emerge, the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart. In Hafeez Lakhani’s Abundance: A Novel, two generations of a Muslim Indian family confront their life choices and grapple with what parts of life we can control. In suburban Miami, a mother refuses an organ transplant and chooses instead to trust in naseeb, the Muslim notion of destiny. As her health deteriorates, her husband struggles to reunite their estranged adult children in an effort to change her mind – and save her life. And in Bobuq Sayed’s No God but Us: A Novel, two gay Afghan men collide in Istanbul after being banished from their homes by circumstances beyond their control. After Delbar meets and becomes fascinated with Mansur, the men are thrust into dangerous proximity at the Istanbul Pride march. As the country surges toward authoritarianism, they must question the price of freedom and what constitutes a life well lived. Moderating is author and journalist Raj Tawney.