The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Publication Date: June 17/25

A complex and emotionally layered family saga that spans decades and continents. Narrated by Jonas, an unreliable narrator, the story revolves around his lifelong fascination with three sisters, whose lives he sees as inextricably linked. From a distance, he observes them navigate a turbulent childhood, marked by constant relocation and a mother struggling with mental illness. A family curse binds Jonas and the sisters, casting a long shadow over their lives and instilling a belief that they are undeserving of happiness.

The story deftly weaves the narrative across time, slowly building on themes of family, culture, race, belonging and buried secrets. This is a character driven novel, rich with complex and deeply flawed individuals whose personal journeys are both poignant and compelling. The story masterfully examines issues of guilt, shame, mental health, suicide, addiction, love and longing. It offers a profound exploration of the tensions and bonds that define sibling relationships, fraught with jealousies, disconnection and deep rooted yearning.

At its heart, this is a novel about the intricacies of human connection, the public faces we present and the our inner dialogue fraught with insecurities. Reminiscent of The Blue Sisters, its a haunting and powerful meditation on identity, love and the enduring need for belonging.

I featured The Sisters in my June 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q31xhbo1tE, and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

Yes, this book is long. But the chapters are short and the characters are compelling and complex. It's a slow read, focused on the characters; very little "happens". But it was spectacular. It is told by Jonas, an outsider to the family, who watches the three sisters grow, grow together, and grow apart. Each sister is unique and uniquely flawed. The story follows these people for twenty years, addressing family, relationships, and secrets, and exploring guilt, shame, love, and longing. Some people say it should be shorter but I could have read more. The slow character development led me to care about them, and I genuinely wanted go read another twenty years of their lives.

The book is a convoluted tale of sisters who struggle to be friends, but desperately need each other in their lives. Each character is flawed and it is hard to like any of them. I didn’t really like the Jonas plot line. I wish the story was told without it. It would have made it more streamlined. I found myself wanting to skip through his parts. I’m not sure if there is emotions or ideas that are lost in translation, but I feel that the sisters were so closed off that it was hard to root for any of them.

This novel is gorgeous but it's far too long. It shifts between the lives of three sisters, alternating chapters, who misunderstand and inadvertently hurt each other as they struggle through their twenties - I love this kind of story, which had echoes of BLUE SISTERS for me. Woven with those chapters are the viewpoints of a young man connected to them. I loved the writing style but especially in the chapters not focused on the sisters, I really struggled to justify the length and think it could have been liberally cut. The novel is beautifully written but I think many readers will struggle with the inconsistent pace.

An ambitious, emotionally layered family saga that spans continents, decades, and generations. The writing is rich and reflective, and the way it explores identity, memory, and legacy through the lives of the Mikkola sisters left a real impression. It’s the kind of book that rewards your patience, sprawling, resonant, and deeply human

4.5 ⭐️ rounded up

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced copy.

When I first heard this was a family saga that spans decades, plays with structure and time, and explores themes of identity, belonging, and legacy, I was immediately in. Also, I have to mention, I find it fascinating that Khemiri wrote this in English, translated it into Swedish himself, and then revised the English version again. The language and style have the feel of a translation in the best possible way, they really pull you in.

This is not a “summer read” in the usual sense, but it is a perfect book to settle into over the summer. Long, layered, and absorbing, with short chapters that keep the pace moving.

I love character-driven stories, especially when we get to follow people over a long stretch of time and grow with them. The Sisters gives us just that. The story focuses on three Tunisian-Swedish sisters and a narrator named Jonas, and takes place across Sweden, Tunisia, Germany, and the U.S. It covers a lot - family, cultural identity, belonging and how past legacies shape future choices.

As a first-gen American, I found so much here that resonated: the push and pull between cultures, language, family expectations, and the desire to build something new. While the cast is large and not every thread is tied up, that sprawling quality made it feel all the more real to me.

There were a few times early on when I wasn’t sure where we were going or if certain moments would circle back—but before long, I was fully invested. By the second half, I didn’t want to put it down.

This is a big, ambitious novel with so much heart. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time and highly recommend it.

The Mikola Sisters and Jonas are quite capable of taking the leading roles in this long novel. The Sisters, Ina, Evelyn and Anastasia are introduced to us in the first scenes of this long, intricate novel. It is New Year’s Eve, actually it is Y2K (remember those anxious dates)? The century was coming to an end, on the launch pad was the last day of 1999. We were awaiting for 2000, would the gods permit us to go ahead, change our calendars and give us permission to craft a new life? It was rather a nothing day and night. Clocks and computers worked and we went on to the next day. The author of this very long book opens his novel on New Year’s Eve with the three Mikkola sisters attending a Y2K New Year’s Eve Party. Ina, the eldest is abandoned by her sisters but she meets Hector. The sisters are close but they have distinct personalities.

The author, similar to three sisters, are Swedish Tunisians. They live in different cultures and the book spans distinctive time periods. The author did a masterful job of reflecting their diverse personalities and language differences. The seem to bounce from both cultures. Jonas, the narrator is fascinating; he is of the same background and understands both cultures.

This was a difficult book to write and one to read because of its length. Although there no wasted scenes, it was too long. I had trouble staying with it at times, not because the story wasn’t interesting, it was never-ending.

My gratitude to Net Galley and Farrar, Starus and Giroux for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Sisters follows the lives of Ina, Evelyn and Anastasia Mikkola; their Swedish father has died, and their Tunisian mother is convinced a curse has been placed upon the family: anything they love too much will lead to its loss. 

Ina, the eldest, is hyper-organised, having stepped into a parenting role from an early age due to the Mikkola sisters' mercurial mother. Evelyn is beautiful and charismatic, drifting along the current of life until an inspiring change of events occurs. Anastasia, the youngest, teems with force, but struggles to channel her energy into constructive choices.

From afar, Jonas- also Swedish-Tunisian- recounts the lives of the sisters and his own from childhood onward, as they intersect throughout the novel.

The novel is divided into 7 parts, each shorter than the other; Khemiri's storytelling is wonderful, engaging, both funny and heartbreaking, and to the point. The novel strikes a balance between being both character- and plot-driven. It can be read as a snapshot of the experience of being mixed race in Sweden, racism, class and Swedish culture, but is also a meditation on the complexity of family, belonging, stories (we tell oursleves), time and life.

I ADORE this book! I laughed out loud and cried, and rolled my eyes, and there were observations I related to so much it felt like someone had plucked them from my brain. I also really enjoyed the meta aspects of the story, and such a huge theme of the book is projection.

Reading this felt like diving into a properly told story and it was so, so enjoyable! I really recommend this for everyone!

Sisters is out on June 16th in the US!

Thank you very, very much to @fsgbooks and @netgalley for an advance copy of this wonderful novel!

'The Sisters' is a sisterhood saga - if I can call it that - revolves on the three Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, Anastasia. They have Tunisian roots but live in Swedia. Their mother believes there's a curse following their family their whole life, a curse that brings all sorts of mishaps and misfortunes to the family - that's why they have to constantly move to prevent it ruining their life completely.

The book spans throughout decades of the sisters' complicated lives. Their relationship with their mother, their lovers, the places they live, their dreams and aspirations (or the absence of it) - and most evidently, with each other. The story goes deep into their shaky grips on wherever the ground they step on, always so unsure, always feeling like they have to run at any moment.

There is a third POV in here as well, a narrator name Jonas - I assumed it is derived from the author himself. His POV intersects with the sisters' POV, simultaneously giving an outsider perspective on their lives. I thought this is an interesting artistic choice, because through Jonas' voice the instability of the sisters and their lives become more vivid, as if someone takes a marker and highlights it.

For me, the format - the third POV, the short chapters, the divided parts - makes the story even more engrossing. Following the sisters' lives becomes something that is addictive, the story seeps into every aspect of their lives that I can't help feeling either like an intruder or a family member, depends on the moment, which is an interesting effect that makes the reading experience feels more intoxicating. It is also incredibly sad. The amount of times they are untethered, the amount of times they collapse, the amount of times they have nothing else but each other. Everything feels so real, that when it ended I had a bit of a hard time saying goodbye.

Although, I have to admit the amount of pages in this book scared me a little at first haha. I also lost my track a few times in the middle but that's a minor setback that mostly comes from me who don't read thick book that often.

Other than that, what an extraordinary piece of work.

The Sisters is a sprawling novel of shifting POVs and an unreliable narrator, Jonas - a Swedish-Tunisian boy growing up in Stockholm. As a child, Jonas’s life becomes entangled with the enigmatic Mikkola sisters, also of Swedish-Tunisian descent, whose lives are haunted by an inherited curse. Spanning three decades, the novel follows their attempts to navigate identity, family and fate.

700-pager alert 🚨 and my second book in a row by a Swedish author. The Sisters is what Blue Sisters wishes it could be. A little shorter and it would have been a solid 5-stars.

This book was incredibly well-written. Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s prose pulled me in from the first page-I felt right at home with the characters. Surprisingly, I loved the absence of quotation marks; it gave the story a soft, nostalgic quality, like seeing everything through a faded photo filter.

The structure was especially striking. The book is divided into six parts, each spanning different lengths of time- from a whole year to just a single minute. It beautifully mirrors how time seems to speed up as we grow older. It felt like the author wasn’t just telling a story with words, but also through form and rhythm. Every choice felt intentional.

The character development was phenomenal. Watching the characters grow and change over time was deeply satisfying. I especially appreciated the honest exploration of family dynamics, identity, sibling rivalry, and the complexities of growing up with a mixed heritage.

That said, it did feel a bit too long at times, and I struggled to connect with Jonas’ character. But the sisters’ chapters more than made up for it.

Despite its length, this book is a unique, artful piece of storytelling. I’m so grateful I got to read it. I’ll always remember how the writing made me feel- warm, full, and oddly happy.

There is something about this book that I can't quite put into words. It's written like a (brilliantly crafted) personal diary of someone else that you should put away because it's not yours, it's not polite to read the secret thoughts of others. But you cannot because it's so thrilling, so exciting, so satisfying. And it also irks you, and rubs you the wrong way because you're a good person! And yet here you are - reading through a life that is not yours... yet extremely recognizable. You're there, with Anastasia (one of the sisters), hiding under the blankets, in the smell and thoughts of Ina (the eldest sister), just existing in this limbo, letting time slip by, waiting for Evelyn to come home after work. You're also there, looking through the eyes of Jonas, watching the sisters' lives and your destiny fold and unfold, collide, and separate all over again. You're the spectator, but also the main character and the writer, and you recognize yourself in all of them and none of them at the same time. All the while the pages slip and flip like the time itself - fast, organized, and yet chaotic.

I gather that this book is or was quite popular in Sweden. There are also many deep and thoughtful reviews in Swedish that I of course read through the automatic translator (not ideal) and that I agree with a lot. I am glad this novel has been translated into English and will be available to an even broader audience once it is published. It's a great book that because of brilliant writing reads fast and is a catchy page-turner despite it being almost 700 hundred pages long. As a lot of (Swedish) reviews have already mentioned, there are many links to great Russian and Anglo-speaking classics - not only in the length of the book but in the style of writing itself and in the slight mysticism and melancholia of it all. I'd even felt it reminiscent of the magical realism of Latin literature. There's also the symbolism of the three sisters, prominent not only in the ancient Greco-Roman tradition but in many other antique traditions of the world. Three sisters spinning the wheel of their lives and one such Jonas (a projection of the author himself?) weaving their time into an ages-long tale and a curse of "everything we love we must lose". Still, I felt that there was something entirely Swedish (and perhaps accessible to Swedes only) in this story. I couldn't help but wonder if it translates well, the way the author (or me) might like it to. “(…) I have tried for years to write about what comes next in Swedish, but for some reason, it doesn’t work, so now I’m trying to do it in English, to see if an imperfect language can make it easier”.

In my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, the book also came with a bunch of stereotypes, mainly in the portrayal of the sisters' characters, especially Ina. Tall, extremely organized, rigidly unsociable - I imagine a lot of people would use these words to describe many of the people residing in the North, or many an older sister for that matter. The characters of Ina and her two sisters were rather narrowly written, in my opinion. Their characters felt as if they were drawn merely as an object of obsession for the character of Jonas - maybe because the narration focus kept switching between the sisters’ lives and Jonas’ pov. And I imagine that this was also an intended point of the book - which, if it worked, would have been a fine part of the story. And yet, it was not one of those rather thrilling and satisfying obsessions that you read with a secret enjoyment in a good darkly themed book. No. To me, it read as if the book about the sisters was rather about Jonas, his life and a sort of reckoning with his father, as seen parallel to the happenings of the sisters’ life, and because of how well this reflects our world, where women's stories are still very often told only to provide interesting insight into men, this obsession felt rather sick and not at all satisfying. I'd go as far as to re-title the book to "Jonas and the Sisters".

That said, I still extremely enjoyed this book, and I hope I didn't sound too negative. It is a brilliantly written story where topics of personal growth, restlessness, melancholia, family dynamics, first and second-generation immigrant identity, or even a broader search for one's identity are explored. It also has a very interesting format where chapters become shorter (time-wise) as we go, from one year to one minute, and it makes you ponder of the wonders and curses of time, life, and love. I cannot believe how fast I ate this (almost 700 page-long) book up and how many thoughts and emotions it provoked. That's always a good sign for me. And maybe I am indeed a bit too critical, because so what if the lines between the author Jonas, the book Jonas, and the sisters are a bit blurry? Often that can also be intriguing and interesting, and it was. I gave the book 4 stars out of 5. I hope, wish, and believe it will find its intended reader in the English-speaking community.

Thank you to the author, publishers, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. My review is based solely on my honest opinion, and is written with the utmost respect.

Thank you to NetGalley & Macmillan books for the advanced e-copy of this book! I absolutely loved the writing style. The description of the sisters and the way that they are spoken of reminds me of “The Virgin Suicides”. Although I didn’t get to finish this book, I would 100% buy a physical copy because I want to know what happens in the end. I really loved this author and am so glad that I got a chance to read some of this book. The cover art is so unique as well.

*The Sisters* is a layered exploration of family ties, sibling tension, and the search for identity. Sometimes meandering more than 700 pages, the story delves into how our roots shape who we are, following the lives of the Mikkola sisters and the narrator closely linked to them, across three decades.

The characters are ordinary people facing everyday struggles, making the story feel authentic and relatable, While the dense, meandering prose can feel overwhelming at first, it becomes oddly compelling, drawing you in.

Still, the novel might have benefited from tighter editing, as some subplots felt distracting and unnecessary.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC which I read in exchange for this review.

I loved sinking into this book. Each sister was fully drawn and easy to root for, despite their flaws. This was so deeply human. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I could have gone for another 600 pages. This was great.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrah, Straus, and Giroux for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. As the title lends itself to, this is a story of three sisters, each with a very distinct personality and coming from a past and family history riddled with secrets, mental health struggles, questions of identity, etc. This book explores the complex relationship between these sisters along with the aforementioned themes and switches back and forth between points of view, following both the sister and our narrator, Jonas.

I was intrigued by this story because I love family centric stories, with deep character studies and a close look at interpersonal relationships. This book absolutely gives you that and if you have the patience to sit through this book, it rewards you in spades in this capacity. I enjoyed being with the characters and felt that they were fully fleshed out; they felt real, with all their quirks and inner fears, hopes, etc. I enjoyed the time in the novel more with them than with our narrator. I felt that some of his sections were quite long, with many run on sentences that felt like just too much. I think the book would have benefited from being shorter but, overall think it was worth it to stick with it. I also think that the translation was very well done and appreciated reading this type of story from another cultural perspective.

This book certainly won’t be for everyone and I don’t think it was a perfect book but, it was a good family story, was great at examining close relationships, and the language was just beautiful. I can’t wait to see this book find its readership and to see what others think when they pick it up!

2.5 stars.

The good: The cover is gorgeous and is what drew me in wanting to read this book. I enjoyed the complexities of the relationships between the three sisters. The differences and oddities of all of them but they maintained their relationships thru time.

The bad: This book was just simply way, way too long for me. Sometimes the paragraphs were so redundant and went on for 3 pages on my kindle in one paragraph that I lost track of what I was reading. I just did not care about any of these characters at all and at certain times I wanted to scream "grow up" to them all. No one seemed to be able to carry on a normal regular relationship.

Sadly, this was a miss for me. Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Jonas Hassen Khemiri for the e-ARC in exchange for my opinion.

From the very first pages of The Sisters, I was intrigued. There’s something about Khemiri’s writing that instantly pulls you in—his sharp dialogue, the way he builds tension, the mystery surrounding these sisters. I needed to know more. And for a while, the book delivered exactly that: a story full of secrets, shifting perspectives, and a creeping sense that nothing is quite as it seems.

That said, the pacing was all over the place. Some chapters had big, exciting reveals that changed everything, while others dragged, making it hard to stay consistently engaged. In fact, I struggled to finish this book—it took me much longer than expected because I wasn’t motivated to keep picking it up. The story had its moments, but I never felt fully hooked in a way that made me want to devour it.

What really held me back from loving this book, though, was the characters. I never quite connected with anyone, which is tough for a novel that’s so character-driven. I don’t mind reading about flawed or even unlikable people, but I do need to feel invested in their journey—and here, I just didn’t. The plot kept me going, but by the end, I was left wondering if all the twists and turns really paid off in a satisfying way.

Still, I can’t deny that Khemiri knows how to craft an intriguing narrative. If you enjoy books with unreliable narratives, a touch of psychological tension, and you don't prioritize deep character development, this might be one to check out. But if you, like me, prefer to get truly attached to the characters you read about, this might leave you wanting a little more.

This book was a real slog to get through. It was epically depressing. After all the suffering that the author puts these characters through, I needed more grace at the end.