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Overview
Told through a prism of female voices, this cinematic debut follows five women with vastly different origins--from the Philippines to Ethiopia to New York City--whose lives bring them to the Arabian Gulf, where they collide with devastating and profound consequences. Dounia, a young Saudi mother, finds herself alienated in a desolate, post-weather, air-conditioned modernist box and decides to rebel against all forms of domesticity. Flora, a Filipina domestic worker haunted by the flood that claimed her infant's life, navigates the perils of her boss's insurrection. Zeinah, a Syrian woman, seeks love within the confines of her arranged marriage to a jihadist and finds herself joining the female morality police. Justine, a white American curator, reckons with her own violence and ethical limitations when her life intersects with Eskedare, a spirited and defiant Ethiopian teenager whose dreams have dead-ended in the Gulf. Bold moves unlock vital consequences, each woman's journey con-fronting us with our own capacity for cruelty, rebellion, resilience--and hope. Written with unsettling intimacy and determined empathy, Gulf exposes the stark realities of what happens when a woman's agency is stripped away and asks how far we will go in order to survive.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781668072141
- ISBN-10: 1668072149
- Publisher: S&s/Summit Books
- Publish Date: May 2025
- Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.05 pounds
- Page Count: 432
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Mo Ogrodnik’s debut novel, Gulf is a quilt of stories, each navigating alienation, isolation and a search for community. Five women whose lives converge around the Arabian Gulf look to understand family, possibilities of freedom and how their experiences fit into the political, religious and social movements of the day. Justine, a museum curator, decides to leave New York and her faltering marriage to prepare an exhibit about falcons for a museum in Abu Dhabi, bringing along her tween daughter. After leaving Ethiopia, Eskedare finds herself, too, in Abu Dhabi, in a moment of personal crisis. In Saudi Arabia, Dounia abhors her life as a new mother living with her husband’s family, and hires Flora—a Filipina worker—to do more than just the job for which she is paid. Meanwhile, in Syria, Zeinah hopes marriage will bring her greater freedom, but after her arranged marriage to an ISIS fighter leaves her further confined, she joins the morality police. In short, compact chapters, we weave and wind between characters’ perspectives. These women are nuanced and complicated, and their strengths and flaws, which lead them toward compliance or defiance, are tautly felt in the prose. As each tries to figure out her next step, their seemingly disparate lives begin to overlap. Justine and Eskedare meet in an unlikely way, and the choices each makes deeply impact the other. Flora’s care for Dounia’s child and Dounia’s postpartum stress collide within the household, raising questions of what care means, and for whom care is a choice versus an obligation. Zeinah has to navigate judgment from her community as she follows her husband’s lead and begins to police other women’s behavior. Each woman has to define her identity within the gendered, race and class-inflected opportunities and expectations to which she is beholden. Gulf brought me, as a reader, into an unfamiliar landscape and lives that were seemingly different from my own—and yet I found myself connecting with the characters, hoping for them, and seeing the complexity of their struggles, in ways that are particular to place, time and culture, yet extend beyond those boundaries. These five voices are jarring, surprising, compelling and deeply human.
Mo Ogrodnik’s debut novel, Gulf is a quilt of stories, each navigating alienation, isolation and a search for community. Five women whose lives converge around the Arabian Gulf look to understand family, possibilities of freedom and how their experiences fit into the political, religious and social movements of the day. Justine, a museum curator, decides to leave New York and her faltering marriage to prepare an exhibit about falcons for a museum in Abu Dhabi, bringing along her tween daughter. After leaving Ethiopia, Eskedare finds herself, too, in Abu Dhabi, in a moment of personal crisis. In Saudi Arabia, Dounia abhors her life as a new mother living with her husband’s family, and hires Flora—a Filipina worker—to do more than just the job for which she is paid. Meanwhile, in Syria, Zeinah hopes marriage will bring her greater freedom, but after her arranged marriage to an ISIS fighter leaves her further confined, she joins the morality police. In short, compact chapters, we weave and wind between characters’ perspectives. These women are nuanced and complicated, and their strengths and flaws, which lead them toward compliance or defiance, are tautly felt in the prose. As each tries to figure out her next step, their seemingly disparate lives begin to overlap. Justine and Eskedare meet in an unlikely way, and the choices each makes deeply impact the other. Flora’s care for Dounia’s child and Dounia’s postpartum stress collide within the household, raising questions of what care means, and for whom care is a choice versus an obligation. Zeinah has to navigate judgment from her community as she follows her husband’s lead and begins to police other women’s behavior. Each woman has to define her identity within the gendered, race and class-inflected opportunities and expectations to which she is beholden. Gulf brought me, as a reader, into an unfamiliar landscape and lives that were seemingly different from my own—and yet I found myself connecting with the characters, hoping for them, and seeing the complexity of their struggles, in ways that are particular to place, time and culture, yet extend beyond those boundaries. These five voices are jarring, surprising, compelling and deeply human.