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Mariam
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 22 2026
Pages: 502
Weight: 1.32
Height: 1.25 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
At nine years old, Mariam leaves Baghdad with her family, carrying more than she understands.
First comes Amman. Then Lyon. A new language. New schools. New rules. And, little by little, a new role inside her own family: the daughter who can explain, translate, smooth things over, and make difficult situations easier for everyone else.
What begins as usefulness becomes identity.
Years later, Mariam is an architect building a life that looks increasingly like her own. She has work she cares about, a city she knows intimately, a family she loves, and Adil-a man she can imagine marrying.
But the closer that imagined future comes, the harder one question becomes to avoid:
What does Mariam actually want when nobody needs her to translate, adapt, or make everything work?
Moving between Baghdad, Amman, and Lyon, MARIAM is a deeply intimate literary novel about migration, family, language, love, and the complicated distance between belonging somewhere and belonging to yourself.
It is a story about the lives we inherit, the lives others imagine for us, and the quiet courage required to choose without certainty.
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