House of Glass Hearts

Words By: Leila Siddiqui | Cover Art By: Aishwarya Sadasivan

A sister desperate to find her missing sibling confronts her family’s dark history

Maera and her ammi never talk about the Past, a place where they’ve banished their family’s heartache and grief forever. They especially never mention the night ten years ago when Maera’s older brother Asad disappeared from her naana’s house in Karachi. But when her grandfather dies and his derelict greenhouse appears in her backyard thousands of miles away, Maera is forced to confront the horrors of her naana’s past. Ruthlessly determined to find out what happened to her brother, Maera comes face to face with the keepers of her family’s secrets—the monsters that live inside her grandfather’s mysterious house of glass.

Seamlessly blending world history with myth, this young adult novel centers on a Pakistani-American family coping with the burdens of their traumatic heritage. In a narrative that switches between colonial India and present-day America, Leila Siddiqui’s ambitious debut explores how the horrors of World War II and Partition continue to shape the lives of South Asians around the world.

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“A genre-bending debut that highlights the intergenerational echoes of pivotal historical events.”—Kirkus Reviews

“...masterfully portrays the transmission of generational trauma. Fusing accounts of historical events (especially ones rarely learned about, at least in the US and Europe) with South Asian folklore, Leila Siddiqui has created an interesting, educational, and effective metaphor for how fear, shame, and pain evolve, from concrete issues for the generation who experienced them, to abstract shadows that filter down to the children.”—Locus Magazine

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Themes:
Magical Realism, Flashback, Consequences of War, Sacrifice, Asia, Family Stories, Family, Grief and Loss, Immigration and Emigration, Siblings, War, World History, World War II, Diary/Journal, Death & Grief