Mama Hissa's Mice

A Novel

By: Saud Alsanousi, Sawad Hussain - translator

Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi

From the author of The Bamboo Stalk and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world.

Growing up together in the Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic origin nor religious denomination - only friendship and a rage against the unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuada’s Kids. Their righteous transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shi’a extremists. They’ve also elicited the concern of Fahd’s grandmother, Mama Hissa, a story-spinning font of piety, wisdom, superstition, and dire warnings, who cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall.

Then one day, after an attack on his neighborhood leaves him injured, Katkout regains consciousness. His friends are nowhere to be found. Inundated with memories of his past, Katkout begins a search for them in a world that has become unrecognizable but not forsaken.

Snaking through decades of Kuwaiti history well into a cataclysmic 21st century, Mama Hissa’s Mice is a harrowing, emotional, and caustic novel of rebellion. It also speaks to the universal struggle of finding one’s identity and a reason to go on, even after the sky has fallen.

©2015 Saud Alsanousi. Translation © 2019 by Sawad Hussain. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

every Kuwaiti needs to read this

the issues this book raises are very real and as a Kuwaiti it scares me to think of a future where we can't set aside our differences in the name of unity. hopefully by God's will the nightmarish future in this book never happens.