About the Book
One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 and Electric Lit’s Best Nonfiction of 2025
At first, Hala’s baby is the size of a poppy seed. Then a grain of rice, then a lime. After years of trying for a child, she watches from afar as her daughter grows in the body of another woman, in another country.
As she waits for news from the surrogate, Hala also holds her breath as Palestine and Lebanon, her estranged homelands, come under fire. She recalls family stories of lives mapped through shifting borders: erased villages, invading armies and temporary refuges; of men who left, women who stayed, and the legacies passed between them.
Stunningly lyrical and unflinchingly honest, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unravelling and becoming – of homelands lost and reimagined, and of the intimate ways we learn to make a life when the ground beneath us shifts.
About the Author
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer and poet. Her novels include The Arsonists' City and Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a Chautauqua Prize finalist. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Reviews
‘A beautiful and intimate memoir of a life in the embrace of stories, Alyan weaves the fine threads of torn and fragmented lives into an irresistible, intergenerational tapestry. I was spellbound from the first page.’ Naomi Klein
‘A story of the violence of exile over generations, a profound desire for motherhood, as well as surrogacy, addiction and the importance of remembering … a story of war and loss – of country, but also of friends, lovers and ultimately her marriage … questioning and lyrical.’ The Guardian
‘[A] gorgeous, lyrical memoir ... I’ll Tell You When I’m Home shows the power of even a single narrative to resist the deliberate erasure of a people and their homeland, the violence of colonization.' The New York Times Book Review
'[A] lyrical memoir that explores the trauma of fractured identity.' Los Angeles Times
'Alyan’s poetic prose encapsulates miles in each sentence and paragraph; joyfully, revisiting a passage is another chance at uncovering a new gift. Her nonfiction narrative voice allows the poet in her to shine, especially as each chapter is told in a series of short glimpses weaving together past and present, the old and the new Hala. ... With I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Alyan has created a record, a story to communicate with those departed and those new to life. In the process, her work is an antidote for others searching for a home they never asked to lose.' Chicago Review of Books
‘A roaring cyclone of memory and imagination and harrowing tribulation. Surrogacy as metaphor for exile. Exile not as a dream for a better life, but as concession, a begrudging necessity. Gaza, San Miguel, Beirut, New York, Damascus—traveling with Alyan’s prose is a thrill. I'll Tell You When I'm Home feels as rich and supersaturated as contemporary consciousness itself—I can’t stop talking about it.’ Kaveh Akbar
