The Sisters
On sale
17th June 2025
Price: £20
‘One of the best novels I’ve ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage’
New Yorker
‘I really loved this book . . . a novel to sink into’
New York Times
‘Superb . . . one of those books you live inside and miss when it’s over’
Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost
‘A moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life’
Raven Leilani, author of Luster
‘A thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love’
Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove
‘If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you’
Tess Gunty, author of the Rabbit Hutch
‘Astonishing . . . every character – every sentence – is startlingly, indubitably alive’
Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
‘His masterpiece . . . life overflows its pages’
Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
MEET THE MIKKOLA SISTERS: INA, EVELYN, AND ANASTASIA.
Their mother is a Tunisian saleswoman, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s party by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following them from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. His life intersects with the sisters across decades and continents, from Stockholm to Tunis and New York. When Evelyn disappears, it’s Jonas who tracks her down – and helps her to break a curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for years. But in the process, a shocking revelation changes everything.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, The Sisters is a vivid, epic family saga of the highest order – an addictively entertaining tour de force.
Perfect for fans of Coco Mellors and Jonathan Franzen
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Reviews
A quilt in the winter, a fireplace of embers, a singing kettle, a blazing forest, a steaming bath, a controlled burn - what you hold in your hands generates every kind of heat. There is violence, and some of it burns, but its most consistent and miraculous energy - the energy radiating beneath every sentence of every page - is a kind of geothermal tenderness. Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters moves generation to generation, neighbour to neighbour, skin to skin, pulse to pulse. If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you
The Sisters is a novel of unsurpassed tenderness. It is about the power of stories, to make and break and finally heal us. Jonas Hassen Khemiri is a born storyteller, of rare and astonishing gifts. Every character - every sentence - is startlingly, indubitably alive
The Sisters is a thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love, one that is about the microcosm of the family as much as it is about the bigger world. Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the very rare combination of a deep intellectual and a true storyteller, as smart as he is entertaining. He is an important voice, a curious mind, and a generous teacher to all of us who have tried to imitate him
The Sisters is a moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life. Jonas Hassen Khemiri ushers you through those developments with humanity and wit and illuminates complex familial intimacies with utter clarity
The Sisters is a superb novel about the pangs and longings of sibling love, about being Arab in Sweden and Swedish in Tunisia, about the strange stories that sustain us and the long rush of time. Captivating and so full of life - one of those books you live inside and miss when it's over
The Sisters is Jonas Hassen Khemiri's masterpiece, a beautiful double helix of memory and imagination. Folding together Stockholm and New York, time and timelessness, self and other, it is an immersive, wondrous reading experience. Life overflows its pages
An extraordinary achievement . . . this is the novel that I didn't know I was waiting for
Momentous . . . I don't waver an instance when I say Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the greatest Swedish lyricist of a century
Spanning over three decades and continents, Khemiri weaves an engaging and intricate tale about generational trauma, curses, loss and love with such ease it's almost provoking. I read it as if my own life depended on the outcome for these sisters. I laughed with them, cried with them, lived with them throughout it all. And when it ended, they stayed with me. It's astonishing that such a complex and epic story can be so easy to devour. One of those stories I wish I could read again for the first time.
In Scandinavia, Khemiri is easily one of the most respected and decorated authors of my generation. This book, his seventh, is a classic story about sibling rivalry, and it follows three chaotic and loving sisters over a period of thirty years . . . Khemiri, who is also of Swedish and Tunisian descent, lives and teaches in New York; he's a true citizen of the world, and he captures that experience in an exceptionally vivid way. This is one of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage. At nearly seven hundred pages, the book is quite long, but Khemiri's language is propulsive - it possesses a flow and a tempo that makes you forget that you're reading
Blending humor and pathos, Khemiri perfectly encapsulates the push and pull of living in two different and sometimes dueling cultures. It's a staggering achievement
I really loved this book. I came to love the characters . . . if someone had cooked up a book in a lab for me, specifically, it would probably resemble this . . . a novel to sink into
This gripping, ambitious novel of love and lineage spans countries and generations
For a life-long reader, it's a pleasure to discover how different generations take an old form - family sagas - and find a fresh approach. One of this summer's most buzzed-about novels, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters, which features three Swedish-Tunisian siblings, Ina, Evelyn and Anastasia Mikkola, and their life-long friend, a writer called Jonas, divides 732 pages into seven progressively shorter chapters. Khemiri told Publishers Weekly that he "wanted to capture how time feels. It's always speeding up as you age. The first part takes place over a year, then six months, one month, one day, and finally, one minute." The effect is startling; you age along with the Mikkolas, feeling the decades fly by as though it were your own life, your own family memories and experiences going past