The latest addition to my website is Rana Haddad:‘s The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor. This is the first novel by a Syrian woman who has spent her adult live in England. This novel tells the story of a Syrian woman, daughter of an English woman and a Syrian heart surgeon, Dunya Noor who, growing up in Syria, does not behave either in the way a young woman is expected to behave in Syria nor does she uncritically support the (Hafez) Assad regime. When she refuses to attend a voluntary demonstration, her mother takes her back to England before there are serious problems. There she meets another Syrian, Hilal, who is a physicist, studying the Moon. They live together but, when Hilal learns of his father’s death six months after the event, they decide to return. Hilal disappears and Dunya, with the help of a singer she meets in a men-only café, tries to track him down. This is a fascinating feminist, anti-Assad love story.