The Sisters

"If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you." --Tess Gunty, National Book Award-winning author of The Rabbit Hutch

"Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the very rare combination of a deep intellectual and a true storyteller, as smart as he is entertaining." --Fredrik Backman, New York Times-bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Anxious People

"Astonishing . . . Every character--every sentence--is startlingly, indubitably alive." --Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies

"One of those books you live inside and miss when it's over." --Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost and The Parisian

"[A] masterpiece . . . Life overflows its pages." --Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025

An addictively entertaining, internationally bestselling family saga by a National Book Award finalist.

Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.

Ina meets her future husband when she's dragged to a New Year's rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.

Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down--and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.

Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order--an addictively entertaining tour de force.