Balsam Karam's The Singularity is an ambitious and striking work of literary fiction in which the narrative charts the losses and developments within two refugee families at different places in slightly different times. One family beset by tragedy has sought refuge in an unnamed coastal town where one of the daughters has since disappeared. Her mother, unable to cope with the grief, drowns herself, leaving her other children to fend for themselves.
The mother's death is witnessed by a visiting pregnant woman, herself the daughter of an immigrant family, whose life is impacted by the sight, as she remembers her own family's immigration to Sweden, an excruciating and alienating experience. Though she and her siblings have assimilated, doing so has come at a steep cost to their family's cohesion and their own mental health. The unnamed protagonist struggles to connect emotionally with a culture in which even the people friendliest to her are seemingly criminally indifferent to the reality of her life.
"None of your white friends have wanted to hear any of your memories from the war. It hits you one day as you're sitting with one of them, listening to him talk about how he used to pick blueberries with his grandmother as a child.... Yes but my friend Rozia was found in the rubble after a bombing, what do you think about that? you say and wait for him to respond."
Karam and Saskia Vogel, who translated this from the Swedish, present a work of exquisite and aching intimacy, one that challenges readers to keep looking and to engage with the pain. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.