Author Chat with Sahar Mustafah

Join us for a roundtable chat with local author Sahar Mustafah! She will discuss her critically acclaimed book, The Beauty of Your Face. Read the book ahead of time and bring your questions to the chat. 

Copies of the book will be available at the Library one month before the event.

Read the ebook on Libby: https://mediaondemand.overdrive.com/media/4966100

If you’d like to purchase the book, please visit https://bookshop.org/books/the-beauty-of-your-face/9781324003380

Book description:
A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter—radicalized by the online alt-right—attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.

The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals. - Goodreads

Author bio:
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel The Beauty of Your Face (W.W. Norton, 2020) was named a 2020 Notable Book and Editor’s Choice by New York Times Book Review, a Los Angeles Times United We Read selection, and one of Marie Claire Magazine’s 2020 Best Fiction by Women. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction 2020 First Novel Prize, as is currently shortlisted for the 2021 Palestine Book Award. Her short story collection Code of the West was the winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Award. Her stories have earned a Distinguished Story citation from Best American Short Stories 2016, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah earned her MFA from Columbia College Chicago where she was the recipient of the David Friedman Award for Best Fiction. She lives in Orland Park and teaches at Homewood-Flossmoor High School.