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Dreams of Water
Paperback. Pub Date :2007-05-01 240 English HarperCollins UK Set during the 1980s civil war in Lebanon. 'Dreams of Water' is complusively readable. deceptively simple and overwhelmingly moving.If you could tell me just one thing about yourself. what would it beShe begins. I would say that I once lost a brother.As a young man disappears. his family is left wondering. hoping. fearing for what may have become of him.It is only through his loss that they begin to truly understand the deep bond of love that ties their family together.Aneesa. his sister. feels the loss of her brother intensely and. unable to live in the vacuum left by his disappearance. she leaves her home and all she holds dear.She moves to London seeking a new life. new friends. and a release from her sorrow.There she meets an older man. another exile who reminds her of home.Brought t...
Paperback
First published March 2, 2007
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About the author
Nada Awar Jarrar
4 books33 followersNada Awar Jarrar was born in Lebanon to an Australian mother and a Lebanese father. She has lived in London, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC and is currently based in Beirut where she lives with her husband and daughter. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and Lebanon's English language newspaper, The Daily Star. Her first novel,
Somewhere, Home
won the Commonwealth Best First Book award for Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 26, 2025
A novel about loss and how people grieve. Tells the story of various Lebanese characters during civil war and how they coped with losses of loved ones.
December 23, 2019
A beautifully written novel that offers a window into the slow and grinding realities of life, love, and loss in the aftermath of war. This is a story about grief and the messy, complex, and unpredictable ways in which it manifests. I appreciated the gradual pace at which the story unfolds, the ways in which it jumps back and forth through time in a poetic rhythm, and the earnestness with which it is written. Jarrar brilliantly compiles a series of simple but perfect moments in the lives of imperfect characters.
January 28, 2008
A beautiful book. Touches many themes - searching for identity, love of family, love of country, grief at loss. Also written in an interesting structure - interwoven story lines in short bursts - verging on stream-of-consciousness at times. It is interesting for me to read books about the Palestinian situation. This is not something which comes up much in western literature.
A great book
A great book
November 20, 2012
A slow starter, especially as there is no chronological sequence in the beginning. By midway i was enjoying the book more and had a clearer idea of the characters' emotions. A poignant novel with no definitive begining or ending
May 24, 2021
A thought provoking, slow, gentle book. Opened a window onto Lebanese life and thought. It brought to life for me some of the current experiences of the population in Beirut following the explosion in Aug 2020
April 13, 2025
Review published in the NZ Herald, 24 March 2007
"On the edge of a black hole"
Dreams of Water
Nada Awar Jarrar
(HarperCollins Publishers, $26.99)
Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson
Set in Lebanon and London, Dreams of Water is a sensitive, wistful novel in which war is like an offstage character, a presence that hovers around the edges. Aneesa grows up in Beirut against the backdrop of war, which appears to be more of a nuisance than scary, until her brother Bassam is kidnapped and disappears,and, after several years, is presumed dead.
Aneesa goes to live in London, to take herself away from the pain of loss. There, she meets Salah, an older Lebanese man, with whom she forms a friendship, and his son Samir, who is studying there. Here the author plays with the fluid boundary between friendship and love. Eventually Aneesa and Samir return to Beirut to face their fears and ghosts, and their two families are woven closer together.
Meanwhile, Aneesa’s mother Waddad has been volunteering at an orphanage to fill some of the emotional space that Bassam left behind. She believes that Bassam has been reincarnated into one of the boys there, whom she befriends with the hope that she might adopt him.
All the characters are pining for things that were, or that could have been. Yet it is not sad, more philosophical. The war is like a great hole in the story around which people shape their lives. It’s the elephant in the room that no one talks about directly. It sucks Bassam into the void of disappearance, and sends exiles running. But the Lebanese identity of the characters is so strong that they are eventually drawn back to their homeland.
Nada Awar Jarrar was born in Lebanon to an Australian mother and a Lebanese father. Her writing style is careful, thoughtful, understated. The book is composed of short passages from various points of view and from different time periods, which I found somewhat confusing, but gradually the pieces pulled together and the two families became more connected. Jarrar resists explaining everything; she leaves questions in the reader’s mind, and gives insights into Lebanese culture.
This is a subtle exploration of notions of family, identity and nationhood, focusing mainly on thoughts, feelings and reactions rather than being plot-driven, although there’s enough of a story to give structure to all the reflection going on.
Despite the insights into the characters’ minds and emotions, however, I was still left in the dark as to the motivations behind some of their actions, and finished the book with a sense of something being missing.
"On the edge of a black hole"
Dreams of Water
Nada Awar Jarrar
(HarperCollins Publishers, $26.99)
Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson
Set in Lebanon and London, Dreams of Water is a sensitive, wistful novel in which war is like an offstage character, a presence that hovers around the edges. Aneesa grows up in Beirut against the backdrop of war, which appears to be more of a nuisance than scary, until her brother Bassam is kidnapped and disappears,and, after several years, is presumed dead.
Aneesa goes to live in London, to take herself away from the pain of loss. There, she meets Salah, an older Lebanese man, with whom she forms a friendship, and his son Samir, who is studying there. Here the author plays with the fluid boundary between friendship and love. Eventually Aneesa and Samir return to Beirut to face their fears and ghosts, and their two families are woven closer together.
Meanwhile, Aneesa’s mother Waddad has been volunteering at an orphanage to fill some of the emotional space that Bassam left behind. She believes that Bassam has been reincarnated into one of the boys there, whom she befriends with the hope that she might adopt him.
All the characters are pining for things that were, or that could have been. Yet it is not sad, more philosophical. The war is like a great hole in the story around which people shape their lives. It’s the elephant in the room that no one talks about directly. It sucks Bassam into the void of disappearance, and sends exiles running. But the Lebanese identity of the characters is so strong that they are eventually drawn back to their homeland.
Nada Awar Jarrar was born in Lebanon to an Australian mother and a Lebanese father. Her writing style is careful, thoughtful, understated. The book is composed of short passages from various points of view and from different time periods, which I found somewhat confusing, but gradually the pieces pulled together and the two families became more connected. Jarrar resists explaining everything; she leaves questions in the reader’s mind, and gives insights into Lebanese culture.
This is a subtle exploration of notions of family, identity and nationhood, focusing mainly on thoughts, feelings and reactions rather than being plot-driven, although there’s enough of a story to give structure to all the reflection going on.
Despite the insights into the characters’ minds and emotions, however, I was still left in the dark as to the motivations behind some of their actions, and finished the book with a sense of something being missing.
May 19, 2022
Lovely title, a beautifully told story of a tragic disappearance during civil war of a brother and son, which has extraordinary consequences in the following years. People trying to cope with the loss of a loved family member is a very relevant theme in the 21st century, with society fractured and war-torn. The feeling of place and interpersonal relationships are what weave a strong fabric of experience for the reader. When you finish the book, you feel as if you have passed through a trauma, and are thankful it wasn't yours.
March 17, 2019
I have read this book 10 years ago. At the time, i did not like it at all. When i decided to give it a second chance, i understand how much my tastes have changed. I've never felt an immense loss or grieve, but i have been very close to it. This slow paced book explores hope after loss, maybe i will never be able to survive that of a loved one, but there might be a tiny glimmer of hope.
February 13, 2014
The book's cover states: "Set in Beiruit during Lebanon's civil war, the book is a story of ordinary people trying to find a way of life in a war-torn city." If this is what the author set out to write, it did not emerge as I read the book.
What I read was the story of a mentally strange (unbalanced) mother, a young woman skirting the realities of life (sending letters attributed to a missing brother)and unable to establish meaningful relationships of any kind - including love or friendship. I had expectations to be reading of a country I knew little about but was very disappointed.
What I read was the story of a mentally strange (unbalanced) mother, a young woman skirting the realities of life (sending letters attributed to a missing brother)and unable to establish meaningful relationships of any kind - including love or friendship. I had expectations to be reading of a country I knew little about but was very disappointed.
June 25, 2019
I personally found this book boring and very slow-paced. The story is so badly structured and did not achieve it's full potential. This could have been such an amazing book to tell of true life experiences and I'm gutted it wasn't.
August 6, 2008
I enjoyed the story placed in the time period more than the writing itself. Fairly well pieced together with some touching sentiments.
October 25, 2009
Its about a lebanees girl telling her story during the war .. i found it little boring since all was about the details of her life.
May 28, 2013
Boring.
August 6, 2013
This book gently moved me, a son never returns home during the civil war in 1980's Lebanon and we see the people around that loss move forward altered and fragile.
January 12, 2016
I didn't rate it 2 stars because it's awful, I rated it 2 stars because it's boring..
October 22, 2016
A great read...the writer beautifully portrays the threads with which relationships are tied together.
December 26, 2018
It is about the Lebanese war and how it affected people. It shows that in the end if u traveled to America or England or the world, you will return back to your roots.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews