Sonora
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2018 NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION'S 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE
A fevered, lyrical debut about two young women drawn into an ever-intensifying friendship set against the stark, haunted landscape of the Sonoran desert and the ecstatic frenzy of New York City.
Ahlam, the daughter of a Palestinian refugee and his Israeli wife, grows up in the arid lands of desert suburbia outside of Phoenix. In a stark landscape where coyotes prowl and mysterious lights occasionally pass through the nighttime sky, Ahlam’s imagination reigns. She battles chronic fever dreams and isolation. When she meets her tempestuous counterpart Laura, the two fall into infatuated partnership, experimenting with drugs and sex and boys, and watching helplessly as a series of mysterious deaths claim high school classmates.
The girls flee their pasts for New York City, but as their emotional bond heightens, the intensity of their lives becomes unbearable. In search of love, ecstasy, oblivion, and belonging, Ahlam and Laura’s drive to outrun the ghosts of home threatens to undo them altogether.
Hannah Lillith Assadi
Hannah Lillith Assadi is the author of The Stars Are Not Yet Bells and Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honouree and teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute. Raised in Arizona, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her third novel, Paradiso 17, was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction 2026.
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