We wanted you to have a powerful start to your reading year with us, and that meant sharing a book that strongly reflects everything we look for in a Good Book Club pick: an untold narrative, a book in translation by a women, and extraordinary writing.

The Singularity by Balsam Karam  tr. Saskia Vogel

The Singularity is a true original. A story of migration, loss, and belonging, Balsam Karam uses stylish language to explore past and  present, and how grief connects us. Saskia Vogel’s translation is masterful as always.

A sense of longing lies at the heart of this book. We see a mother searching for her lost daughter in an unfamiliar coastal town. She lives with her family, displaced on the fringes of an inhospitable society, surviving one day at a time in their new environment.  

Meanwhile, a pregnant woman on a business trip bares witness to the crescendo of the mother’s pain, which brings about her own irreconcilable loss.  

Reading The Singularity makes it impossible not to empathise with the migrant experience. At a time when information overload makes it difficult to capture any nuance at all, and people’s lives are reduced to statistics, this book feels important as it does timely.