"Fire In Every Direction," by renowned Palestinian scholar Tareq Barconi, is a deeply moving, beautifully written memoir about identity, love, and belonging. Spanning generations and continents, Barconi weaves personal and political history with humor, heart, and honesty. This story of queerness, family, and the search for home is intimate and unforgettable. This is a book that will stay with readers long after the final page.

I’m absolutely speechless after finishing this book. It’s one of those rare reads that feels both deeply personal and universally moving. The emotional depth is palpable, and the storytelling is honest in a way that quietly demands your attention.

What stood out most to me was how effortlessly the book weaves political and social themes into the personal lives of its characters. It never feels forced or heavy-handed…instead, it invites readers to engage with important issues in a way that feels natural and human.

Books like this are so important, especially right now. For young people in particular, it offers a meaningful and relatable perspective on identity, belonging, and the world around them. I feel genuinely grateful to have experienced this story. It’s powerful, relevant, and something I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

It's honestly a rarity that I pick up a nonfiction book and feel completely and utterly speechless, bereft, and also transformed, but WOW. This was an incredible, deeply personal, and moving testament to both the queer and Palestinian identity, and a man’s journey as he reckons with both over the course of a lifetime.

This book is a multidimensional, multifaceted wonder, as it's interspersed with splices of stories from Tareq's grandmother who fled Palestine during the Nakba, Tareq's mother and father who fled Beirut at the start of the civil war in Lebanon, and Tareq himself, fleeing in a way his own queer identity, as he simultaneously grapples with an inheritance of grief and resistance as a Palestinian in diaspora.

Tareq's profoundly vulnerable unpacking of both of his identities — and the ways in which they intrinsically intersect — is not only thematically compelling, it’s written so beautifully and so intimately it feels at times like a personal diary, something Tareq touches on in his acknowledgments, noting that 'writing is not a task to be done, but a life to be lived' — and what a life it is, as he shares generational histories and legacies of 'fire' passed down from his mother, his wrangling with his queerness in the face of '3eib', and the reckonings, both big and small, that make up one's journey.

There are so many threads that tie this story together with themes of transformative love: that which is unrequited, given to a best friend who is unable or unwilling to make space for it, that of a grandmother praying for her grandson’s well-being, that of a parent who sought to insulate their children from a legacy of grief and a lost home, that of himself, as he comes to terms with who he is, and ultimately that of a homeland only known secondhand.

Nothing I say about this beautiful story could ever do it justice, and I'm so grateful to Atria for allowing me the opportunity to read an advance copy. This releases on November 4, and I encourage any of you looking for something beautiful, transformative, and moving-to-the-point-of-tears to pick it up when it releases.