Love is an Ex-Country

Funny, fierce, and full of joy and pain.

* Refinery29 *

One of the finest writers of her generation.

If you have ever felt lonely or horny or angry or magnificent this memoir is for you. What a boon it is, a perfect, unforgettable howl of a book.

Randa Jarrar is the Arab femme daddy of my dreams and her voice is nothing short of ROYAL. That’s the type of literary, diasporic, and necessary realness Randa serves.

There wasn’t a page in this memoir that didn’t make me want to jump up and cheer, murmur in awe, scream with laughter, or weep. Randa Jarrar is exactly the kind of role model we need right now.

Through Jarrar's capacious and veracious gaze, we see our nation as a woman 'continually refugeed, constantly uprooted and hurried forward and off-ward,' a woman who yearns to see a home that has never really seen her.

* O, The Oprah Magazine *

Jarrar is a propulsive writer and the pieces amassed here are chaotic and exuberant, defiant and introspective.

* The New York Times Book Review *

This memoir is deeply literary, but she breathes new and hilarious life into what I thought was possible when writing about being an immigrant, an Arab-American, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a traveler, and most of all, a body—or, as she puts it, a "queer fat body."

* Harper's Bazaar *

A visceral, unforgettable memoir.

* Esqui