The Private Apartments

"Idman Nur Omar’s stories have a prismatic and glittering brilliance. The Private Apartments spans the world, tracing the passageways that join one life to another in writing that is wise, clear-eyed, and bold. This astonishing collection heralds a major new talent." - Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

"The closely observed characters in these stories amount to a poignant work of short fiction that could also be called a novel. Idman Nur Omar’s light touch insightfully connects the start of the 1991 Somali Civil War with the forms of life that grow from uprootedness and struggle into lasting shape elsewhere. This work, spanning continents and two decades, reveals a writer of incisive narrative vulnerability and asks us to read her intimate graces as a storyteller with mature tenderness. The distinctive pleasures of The Private Apartments’ stories are waiting. Why not come in?" - Canisia Lubrin, author of Code Noir

"The Private Apartments absorbed me from the very beginning. Idman Nur Omar is a skilled writer, whose sensitive and stirring depiction of the lives of Somali immigrants calls to mind Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. I cared about these characters. I felt curious about them, gutted for them. I kept reading as much for the crisp, graceful writing and complicated, human portraits as to see what would happen next." - Shashi Bhat, author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth