Loukko by 
Original title: Huono tyttö
Author: Sara Al Husaini
Published: 2023
Publisher: Like
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 295
Reading material:
Finnish manuscript, English sample
An honest and authentic debut novel & winner of the BookBeat Newcomer of the Year Award, a novel that shakes the reader to their core
A mother is escorting her daughter, trembling with fear, to the wedding suite door. This is what she’s been raised for ever since she was little, kept in wrapping paper like a precious sweet. This is the reason why she was brought back from Finland to Iraq.
“You shouldn’t have abandoned the headscarf”, her siblings say. “He is your husband now”, her mother says.
A Disobedient Girl is an astonishingly honest and authentic story about the history of subjugating and silencing women, about abandoning one’s faith, honor violence, forced marriage, Islamic morality, the price of freedom, and the desperate desire for the right to self-determination. Above all, it is about a fearless woman who wants to survive and change the world.
Based on her own experiences, Sara Al Husaini’s novel A Disobedient Girl should be on the reading list of as many people as possible. It is an eye-opening and hopefully heart-opening story - or rather a document of sorts - about how the right to, among others, one’s own body is not everyone’s privilege.
– Kaisa Koski, Hämeen Sanomat newspaper
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