Happy Arab-American Heritage Month! We’re celebrating by sharing a book by an Egyptian-American author that you absolutely need to pre-order ASAP. Read on to find out why.

Have you ever read the first line in a book and immediately knew you were going to stay up until 4 A.M. reading because you couldn’t put it down? Well, that’s what it was like opening up The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem (she/her).

The first in a duology, the book “follows a fugitive queen who’ll go to desperate lengths to secure her freedom—even if it means striking a deal with her worst enemy,” says Sara. Sylvia, the aforementioned royal, had been presumed dead since her family was massacred and her homeland of Jasad scorched. So, she’s been in hiding (successfully) for years since Jasadis are hunted as the sole magic wielders left in the world. “When Sylvia’s magic reacts for the first time,” Sara explains, “it leads the Heir of an enemy kingdom to make her an offer: compete for him in the upcoming tournament and help lure rebel groups of her own people [in return for] permanent freedom from persecution.” Are you sold? Because you should be. The book has intrigue, deception, secrets, and some serious will they, won’t they enemies to lovers action.

For Sara, growing up Arab-American meant that her relationship to her culture developed in different phases. As a child, she was desperate to fit in. “I naturally resented the things that made me different. My hair, my skin tone, the way I pronounced certain words, the foods I didn’t eat and didn’t understand,” she recalls, “In my head, it was awful that I was going home to eat macarona bechamel or mahshi instead of meatloaf.”

When her family moved to Egypt, she had the opposite experience—her Americanness made her stick out. “But living in Egypt taught me to appreciate so many aspects of the culture that I’d never encountered before,” she says. She hasn’t understood the nuances and joys of being Arab-American because she was so preoccupied trying to “compensate for them.” When she returned to the U.S., she committed herself to learning everything: the stories of Egyptian history, the best recipes for traditional dishes, and the proper way to respond to certain greetings and blessings.

Knowing about her experiences, it’s only natural that the book pulls from Egyptian culture in its worldbuilding. It was important for Sara that “an Arab-American who picked up The Jasad Heir would be able to smile in recognition when they saw aspects of Egyptian culture, instead of dreading what came next,” which is unfortunately par for the course with a lot of media that portrays Middle Eastern or North African people. To counteract these narratives, Sara crafted a story around multi-faceted characters that exemplified a diverse and beautiful culture. Plus, “I also wanted to assert my opinion that putting lemon on fūl is the only correct way to eat it and my siblings are all wrong,” she says. To be fair, she’s 100% right and her siblings are wrong.

Sara explains, “Getting to write The Jasad Heir as an Egyptian-inspired fantasy novel has been so wonderful in terms of helping me explore that balance. Sylvia knows about her people and kingdom only distantly, and throughout the book her relationship with her identity, her community, and her sense of self evolves.”

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced reader copy (ARC) of the book, and now that I’m almost finished, I can say with absolute certainty that you’re going to want to pre-order it. “I know pre-ordering a book when [it’s a] debut can be a risk,” says Sara, “so I’m really pleased to thank folks who take the leap with The Jasad Heir with fantastic merch! They can submit their receipts through the Google Form and I (or my younger siblings, who owe me some unpaid labor) will ship them out after release.”

I’ll leave you with this quote from Sara: “At its core, The Jasad Heir is about belonging: how it influences the duties we owe to the places we’re from and the people we’re born to, who it tethers you to, and how it makes you brave.” Who can’t relate to that?

With dark circles under my eyes from staying up too late reading,
Reina Sultan, associate editorial director