Floodlines

by Saleem Haddad

Set between London and Baghdad, Saleem Haddad’s brilliant second novel is a sweeping, multigenerational tale of art, exile, memory, and the enduring legacies of war.

In the summer of 2014, three long estranged Iraqi-British sisters are pulled back into each other’s orbit by the rediscovery of their late father’s long-lost paintings. Beautiful, elusive Zainab; embittered, practical Mediha; and headstrong, queer Ishtar each lay claim to their father’s legacy—an artistic and personal inheritance entwined with betrayal, exile, and a homeland they no longer recognize.

As the sisters fight to preserve, erase, or repurpose the past, Zainab’s estranged son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by trauma and heartbreak, returns to the family fold. With the reemergence of buried memories comes a reckoning, and the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart.

Spanning continents and decades—from 1950s Baghdad to contemporary London, from the Tigris River to Yemeni refugee camps—Floodlines is at once an intimate family drama and, in its scope, a modern epic. It is a rare novel that bridges the historic and the immediate and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to belong, to create, to endure.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Middle East, Queer, LGBT, Historical Fiction, Family

336 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2026

About the author

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father.

His first novel, Guapa, was published in 2016, receiving critical acclaim from The New Yorker, The Guardian, and others, and was awarded both a Stonewall Honour and the 2017 Polari First Book Prize.

He has also published a number of short stories, including for the Palestinian sci-fi anthology Palestine +100. He also writes for film and television; his directorial debut, Marco, premiered in March 2019 and was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for ‘Best British Short Film’. His work has been supported by institutions such as Yaddo and the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.

He is currently based in Lisbon, with roots in London, Amman, and Beirut

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Powerful novel that follows an Iraqi family across generations. I appreciated that Saleen Haddad wrote about the conflict that can come between three siblings and how that personal conflict can coincide with differences in political ideologies/worldviews. Floodlines as a whole does a nice job addressing the intersection of art, neocolonialism, and resistance.

The main reason this book gets a slightly lower rating for me is that I felt that by the middle of the book, the political messages took precedent over the character voice/dialogue/development. The political messages are super important, though to me it seemed that some of the tightness of the prose, especially when it came to the characters’ interactions with one another and within themselves, dissipated. Would still recommend though especially for folks who may not mind a more discursive writing style!

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ostensibly, Floodlines is about three Iraqi-British sisters, who are not getting along. They've been expats/immigrants for many years, two of them settled in the UK, one in Dubai. Their feelings about their homeland are complicated. Their Iraqi father was a famous artist, long dead. Their British mother, Bridget, also an artist, is now in her eighties, reaching the last chapter of her life.

As it's the case with most families, there are grudges, regrets, guilt and a whole lot of feelings. The sisters are artists themselves, with different levels of success.

Haddad did a splendid job interspersing the sisters' parents lives in 1950s Bagdad and later with the women's memories and their histories, and their current lives.

There is so much packed in this book, in less than 400 pages, which is quite the accomplishment.

Heritage, destiny, art, legacy, colonialism, imperialism, relationships, belonging - this novel had it all. It's definitely going to be among my favourite reads of 2026.

Highly recommended.

[Pedro Marques · Rating 5 out of 5]

Floodlines completely fascinated me. This was my first experience reading Saleem Haddad, but it will certainly not be my last. This is an easy five-star read and, in my view, a novel everyone should read, especially given our current geopolitical moment and the fractures shaping our world today.

Floodlines is a multigenerational family and historical drama that truly feels epic. Spanning continents and decades, it is inspired by Salim Haddad’s great-uncle, the Iraqi modernist painter Jewad Selim, and carries the weight of both personal and national history on every page.

At its centre are three estranged sisters, Zainab, Ishtar, and Mediha, forced to confront their father’s legacy, once one of Iraq’s most celebrated artists, and the buried secrets entwined with his work. Through them, each character is compelled to face their own story as it is engraved into the fractured history of their homeland.

This novel grapples with loss, displacement, family, art, and the deep wounds of neocolonialism. It asks how individual and collective identities are shaped by memory and heritage, and how we live in the tension between preserving the past and carrying hope for the future. How do you bear the weight of history when the past itself is broken?

Through each character, we follow the history of Iraq, its culture, its soul, its grief, its fragmentation, and its enduring spirit.

Art and cultural inheritance sit at the heart of this novel. As Haddad himself describes it, this is about “the role of art in times of rupture.”

Zainab’s son, Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by both past and present, becomes a powerful lens through which the novel examines trauma, queerness, longing, and the burden of family legacy. Throughout, the story holds a constant tension: tradition versus future, history versus modernity, resistance versus hope.

The dialogue is sharp, charged, and deeply moving. And beneath it all runs a haunting question: at what cost do we fight for home and legacy when they have been blown apart by those in power? Do we truly own our home?

This book taught me so much. It sent me down paths of research into Iraq’s history and geography, and the author’s years of work and research are felt on every page.

James Baldwin’s words, used as the epigraph, perfectly capture the soul of this novel:
“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.”

[Mark Kwesi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, meandering family saga about grief, memory, broken promises, and the secrets we keep.

[Rita da Nova]

«Cada uma destas personagens tem motivações claras e bem justificadas — mesmo que não concordemos com elas —, e, por mais que as suas atitudes nos enervem, não temos como as odiar. E não temos como as odiar precisamente porque vão fazer-nos lembrar as nossas próprias famílias, das dinâmicas a que nos habituámos a assistir.»

Review completa em: https://ritadanova.substack.com/p/flo....

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Elias Jahshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking. Will be one of those novels that will sit with me for a long time afterwards.

[Catherine Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeahhhh this was Good!
each sister was somehow an archetype and represented a different way to cope with estrangement but still felt real and complex.
ultimately, was confused was Mediha didn’t tell her story from her own POV, why her character felt so neglected and a bit vilified even w the darkness introduced. messy but good

[Sof · Rating 5 out of 5]

A multi-generational novel, Floodlines mainly focuses on the turbulent relationship between three Iraqi-British sisters (Ishtar, Zainab, and Mediha) as they navigate displacement, war, violence, love, family secrets, and more throughout their lives.

This is one the best books I’ve ever read! It is so beautifully written and powerfully haunting in its descriptions. The book opens with the perspective of Nizar, the son of Zainab. He is a war journalist living in London, but has recently started doing sex work. Through his pov, we come to understand how his past and his identity have shaped his relationships. A lot of his pov is him reflecting on his past relationship with a man named Alfie. These moments were really heartbreaking to read, evident through Nizar’s own fervent heartbreak.

Throughout the book we also get Zainab’s and Ishtar’s perspectives, as well as their mother’s, Bridget’s. In all these povs, we come to understand the family better and how each perspective tells the same story but with different perceptions and feelings. I thought this was so well done and I was really invested in each character’s thoughts and memories. I also loved the descriptions of Baghdad. So many of the character’s thoughts are them reflecting on how they remember Baghdad; the streets they walked, the places they lived, the jobs they went to. Later, they reflect on its many changes, both known and unknown; how wars, foreign intervention, and colonialism have changed the landscapes of not just Baghdad, but Iraq as a whole. The perfect way to describe this novel would be “nostalgia.” And while the characters are nostalgic of the past, they are also running away from it.

In general, I loved the story, and I loved the characters, even though they could be frustrating at times (one in particular made me angry). Haddad did an amazing job at representing both the good and bad parts of them. These characters are not perfect; they have made mistakes and hurt others. Life is complex and people contain multitudes and I love when books tackle that unflinchingly, which is what Floodlines does.

This is truly a wonderful book and I’m so grateful to have gotten an ARC for it (thank you Europa Press and Netgalley)! Floodlines releases February 12! 🩷

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this multi-generational family drama based around 3 sisters & their extended family of artists from Iraq. Dealing with loss, exile, displacement, memory, hope and sisterly drama.

The inheritance of their late fathers paintings brings up long buried secrets and traumas that can't be ignored. I liked seeing the history of Iraq through a family perspective; the estranged sisters have to deal with their shattered links to each other and to their country, both transformed by tragedy.

The weight of history and the transformation of memories is heavy but the hope for something else glimmers. We can only live so long in stasis before we have to flow on. Art and the river will show us the way; the path of the future threads away before us, full of hope even with the inevitable uncertainty of its future flooding.

I really enjoyed this exceptional novel, the voices are beautiful, authentic, moving and extremely hopeful. Now need to read his other novel.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc for my honest review.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Floodlines is an entrancing mix of family secrets, tensions between sisters, art, war, displacement, and love set in a land I have never visited but that i feel I know. Exiles looking for home and looking for hope and putting themselves back together on that dirty ancient river. I found myself procrastinating finishing the book because I didn't want it to end... the final journey was worth the wait.

[Michael Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

(A special shoutout to Jouja for putting this book on my radar and for ultimately making Iraq next in my personal series of 'reading my way around the world.')

I was spellbound by this read in large part because of how Haddad characterizes the three sisters and their wildly different relationships with Iraq and its heritage. One who reads virtually every ill of the Arab world as downstream of Western interference. One who turns the critique inward on Iraq itself, vilifying the place as a whole and who leans largely into the Western train of thought. And one who sits in the middle, holding onto the more 'beautiful' aspecrs of their heritage, but who's role as an informant in the old regime complicates a fully clean read as the 'moderate' sister. The book centers around their competing strategies for handling their heritage: repurposing, erasing, and preserving the past.

This easily could have been a story about three sisters, but having Nizar(Zainab's son), and Bridget (their mother) in the mix shows the intergenerational complexities of how the trauma of empire, war, and inherited history is metabolized across time. I appreciated Haddad's balance of referring to Nizar's identity as a queer man, and elaborating on the challenges he faced navigating a relationship with someone who didn't carry the same culturally inherited trauma, without making that the central narrative of the book (while also adding some unhinged and hilarious lines around it that offer comedic relief).

I don't think I've had so many annotations where something Haddad wrote reminded me of something in my life, or I could at least visually put myself at the Ottolenghi in Shoreditch as easily as the markets in Satwa.

[Ayicia Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was devastating in so many different ways. I loved all of the characters and the messy fun sad family dynamics. Reallly really good scene setting with descriptions of the Tigris River and returning to a place after you’ve been away for a long time. Broke my heart over and over again!!!!

[Alesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating novel for many reasons. It deals with modern Iraq, bi-cultural families, queerness, interfamily dynamics, and the importance of art in the Arab world.

At first I was tempted to put the book down, since the vicious arguments between three sisters were disturbingly real (and very depressing). Also, the author writes without telling us who is speaking, which can get pretty confusing. With four main female characters, it takes some effort to figure out the dialogue. I'm not sure why the author chose to punctuate this way, but I wish he hadn't.

Which brings us to the topic of a man writing from four female viewpoints (plus one male viewpoint). I didn't realize the author was a gay man until after finishing the book. That explained why a few of the females' issues felt just a bit off to me (for example, the lifelong trauma of a miscarriage, when numerous healthy children came afterwards). But for the most part, he got inter-sister rivalry right.

A lot of the book is about the importance of art. All of the main characters are artists, some very famous and some not. The deceased father of the family was one of Iraq's most prominent artists. In the afterward, we learn that he was a real person, as was his wife, and the novel is loosely based on his life and family. Not being all that knowledgeable about art myself, a lot of the artsy discussions went over my head. But the parts about the intersections of colonial and Middle East art were fascinating.

The discussions about the Iraqi diaspora were wonderful. I really enjoyed learning about the longing for a homeland that no longer exists, how emigres feel displaced their entire lives, and how this defines their personalities. The characters ended up living in many different countries, over many periods of turmoil in the Arab world, and all of this rang true.

Some the secrets/reveals felt a bit stretched to me. But it all came together nicely in the end. I enjoyed one character becoming obsessed with the myth of Gilgamesh and wanting to float an old-style ark down the Tigris River. I wasn't sure about the details of all this (boating in Iraq while ISIS is on the rampage, for instance), but it was interesting to say the least.

The author really poured his heart and soul into this book, which I admire. I learned so much. It wasn't always easy reading, jumping around frequently between voices, and participating in witnessing deep family arguments. But once hooked, I couldn't put it down.

The writing is elegant:

"It is difficult to love an artist. They are selfish creatures. An artist might lie, cheat, and steal with the belief they are creating something more important than a single life. To love an artist, you must have an even stronger belief in the power of art. An artist's lover lives with the heat and smoke of the fire, but the light falls elsewhere."

Thanks the NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy.

[Zuzanna Skolimowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

so profound and well thought out

[Snehil · Rating 5 out of 5]

When we think of displacement-the one often forced by a bald eagle flying over a resourceful land and people, ready to democratise the air, the land, the water, everything in sight-we tend to think of physical relocation. But as the characters in Floodlines know, you can never fully relocate; the place you grow up in holds you in a tight grip (or embrace), and you-following Newton’s third law-also hold it in your hearts and minds, refusing to let it sneak away. And God forbid, if you are an artist, your longing can torment you in even more myriad ways, by making your hopeful brushstrokes full of cynical breaks and pauses; the chokehold of the memories expands to every aspect of your life.

We follow the Mathloum family-parents Bridget and Haydar, and their daughters (Ishtar, Zainab, Mediha), and Zainab’s son Nizar. All of them are experiencing three time periods at the same time: the heavy winds of the past, the burden of responsibility in the present, and the concern about the future, making a three-dimensional prison around them. Saleem Haddad beautifully shows what effects such triple anxiety can have on people, especially when every generation is not only dealing with it, trying to break free from it, but oftentimes passing on a multiplied sense of captivity. The characters try to stand firm on the ground, not willing to let the global, imperial challenges shake them, even though the ground under them doesn’t just move; it is violently bombed, mercilessly altered to become unrecognisable. This kind of bombardment can be disorienting; the characters often forget who they are, where they belong, and that is when art provides them with that ability to return home. It allows them to accept, process, and understand the imperfections in their decisions all along, and make peace with the fact that the past can’t be restored to the perfection of the memories they hold. And it also enables them to see each other-their fellow family members-as people who didn’t have a ready-made template to help them deal with the beast of forced displacement, and every new attempt to break free of this generational turbulence will be full of mistakes-unforgivable, but understandable.

Stunning work by Saleem Haddad!

[Susan L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved really everything about this book although the chapter told from the dying elderly mother’s (Bridget) point of view really sticks with me. Her perspective shows up at a time in the story when you don’t think about her except from the point of view of her three daughter’s own perspectives about the burden of caring for her and their own tortured pasts. It’s in the middle of the book.

Up until this one chapter, the sister’s stories as well as the stories told by Nizar, Bridget’s only grandson are compelling and modern, mixed into livelihoods / lives pursued in the Middle East and London. The sisters are artists descended from an Iraqi father and British mother who rose to prominence as famous artists themselves but whose legacy has been muted by history; Nizar is a war journalist despondent over what’s he’s seen and how it has no place or existence in his city life. There are many complicated threads and all are interesting.

The novel reveals world and family histories in the midst of a war zone and is unfathomable. Our government drops the bombs that ultimately destroy the lives of the inhabitants. When and how will we pay for these crimes?

[Sanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an incredible read: definitely one of my new all time favourites. Frankly, I feel like any words would sell this short, but this was such a well-written story that interwove the experiences of various family members across multiple generations with past, present, future, and art. It showcased really well how people growing up together can perceive things in different ways and retain other experiences and memories. This book also really encouraged me to research certain historical (and current) events more in depth, which I think is always a great thing for a fictional book to do. Definitely a read that will stay with me.

[K Agbebiyi]

Took me forever to read this book so I don’t know if I can properly review but it could have been shorter in my opinion and the POV changes made it difficult for me to connect. There were some really great lines in here especially towards the beginning. I would read something else by the author I think.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first 5 star review from me in a longgg, long time. Wow. This book is so revolutionary in its storytelling, I was left bursting with wisdom as me and my partner drove to the shops talking about death and grief, and how pointless it all feels. Yet, it is within this pointlessness that every point exists, it is through art, love and pain that our lives come to mean something, in this we are free. Floodlines is a river weaving between grief, art, trauma and the lives of three estranged British-Iraqi sisters, each with individual opposing ideas of their Iraqi roots. All characters are stubborn and fierce in their feelings, inherited surely from their father who was a culture shifting artist and their head-strong mother, who had to keep it all together. Set mainly against the backdrop of 2014 Iraq, a time of mass military violence - a fragmented country that brings the sisters back together, a home to them, a birth-place of everything they are. Touching on themes of queerness - belonging - disillusionment - trauma and finally acceptance, I will recommend this book to every person I know.

"Art will not save us. It will not magically make things right. But art can make us feel just a little bit better, just a little less alone." - Layla AlAmmar

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up

[Helene Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Floodlines is a multi-generational novel set predominantly in 2014. The blurb doesn’t do this novel justice as the story is much more complex than the blurb suggests. It deals with heavy subjects, including the effects of trauma and loss on family dynamics. The pacing in the middle was a bit slow in my opinion (which is why I have deducted a star), but I read this novel in the course of several weeks as my commuting book, and I never not felt like picking it up.

[Anna Baird-Hassell · Rating 5 out of 5]

really enjoyed the act of reading this book. I love a family of interesting characters and I love a book that tickles my sociology brain

[Wiley Kohler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is soooo ambitious in scope and pulls it off beautifully. Could tell I was going to love it from page 1

[dee (zuko’s girlfriend) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The journey through the lanes of old Baghdad coinciding with the current chaos, shaping hallucinations and grief was beautifully depicted in the book. I think this book touches the core of being alive. Seen from the lens of an artist, Haddad is very efficient about the way he makes the character very realistic and trying to escape the cage of suffering.

The historical relevances are on point, and you see the dark face of colonialism, capitalism and communism altogether. The best part is author’s inspiration from a real-life artist and his self immersion, which gives an insight to the complex mind of the inhabitant of the world defined with the term “diaspora”. I loved the epiphanies, the regrets, and the schizophrenic flashbacks which gave the work its true artistic nature.

[Mar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh this lost me in so many places. I’m going to see him do a book talk in Athens on Wednesday so wanted to love it as much as I loved Guapa.. alas…

[Emily Madison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ass.

For starters, everyone is horrible. I don't even care about spoiling. I know the point of the book is that everyone's horrible and way too caught up in the past, but they're horrible to the point that I don't even root for any of them. Zainab was a government informer who believes in Gulf country propaganda. Ishtar is a lunatic who believes in tankie propaganda. Mediha is cruel and commits sadist elder abuse. Nizar blames his white boyfriend for every problem and refuses to let him have an ounce of joy. The lesson of the book is to forgive yourself but honestly everything the characters did was so horrible that the lesson of reconnecting with your culture in a truthful manner falls flat. What the lesson should be is that you can create your own culture and you don't have to forgive people. You just have to find joy.

I'm not pro psychiatry, but every character was mentally ill in a clinical way (coming from someone who suffers from severe mental illness) and that should've been addressed.

As a book that claims to be about Iraq and Iraqi culture I barely know anything new on it other than Mesopotamia. Everyone discusses it, but it's seldom described in reality. It makes me feel icky. I do find it interesting that the theme is people trying to find themselves in a 'dying' Arab world and in the ashes of a country's destruction but there is nothing more profound than that, just various debates on issues in the Arab World where nothing profound is said.

they also let the mom be redeemed when she let all of her daughters be abused and molested by an evil uncle.

Just skip this one it's really bad.

[Anika Chugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contrary to a lot of the positive reviews for the book I just felt so…confused. Each chapter is labeled as “2014” but the actual content of the book jumps back and forth between the 1950’s and the present day so I was never reallyyyy sure where I was in the characters’ storyline. After the initial conflict was introduced, I feel like the author then just dumped a lot of backstory and political commentary, which lost me. And then, by the end, I didn’t really understand what the conclusion to the conflict actually was. And a huge part of the plot is seemingly the distant son coming back into the family fold, yet I feel like he was talked about so little? I was excited by the idea of a multigenerational story but overall I was very unsatisfied.

[Stuart Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is brimming over with ideas and themes of sexuality, family relationships, art, geopolitics, and child abuse.
Such is the pallette that the word count doesn't feel substantial enough to cover the ground.
The story is written well, and the characters are well fleshed out and believable.
Despite the Iraqi setting and the geopolitical turbulence, this is ultimately a very human story about a family finding healing with the River Tigris and the earthy colours of a natural Iraq as a backdrop.

[Trey Minter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars: The first 75 pages of this book had me thinking we were in store for one of my top 5 books of all time. The writing is so beautiful and so emotional. I haven’t read a family as real and visceral since Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. I think the momentum slowed for me after the first 100 pages, but it’s still a brilliant work