Skip to main content

Naeem Murr

Biography

Naeem Murr

Naeem Murr, a dual US and UK citizen, is the author of four novels: THE BOY, a New York Times Notable Book; THE GENIUS OF THE SEA; THE PERFECT MAN, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and EVERY EXIT BRINGS YOU HOME. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.

Naeem Murr

Books by Naeem Murr

Every Exit Brings You Home
by Naeem Murr - Fiction

As a financial crisis looms, Jamal “Jack” Shaban is trying to save his neighbors from bankruptcy. For his flight attendant colleagues, he’s an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Birdy knows nothing about Dimra, Jack’s traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Nor does Dimra know about Jack’s attraction to Marcia: an angry single mom new to the building. The resulting tangle of love, desire and conflict returns Jack to the violence of 1980s Gaza, where a taboo affair nearly destroyed his life. A man of many sides --- adulterer, devoted husband, fixer, community leader, liar, and the survivor of human and cosmic cruelty in the past and the novel’s present --- Jack is a paragon of both desire and hope.