I'll Tell You When I'm Home: A Memoir

One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 and Electric Lit's Best Nonfiction of 2025The rich and deeply personal debut memoir of motherhood via surrogacy, by award-winning Palestinian-American poet and novelist Hala Alyan. ''[A] lyrical memoir that explores the trauma of fractured identity.'' ''An emotion-packed exploration of the impact of loss on identity.’ ''Alyan’s writing doesn’t offer easy answers; it gives voice to the ache and beauty of diasporic existence.''

''[A] gorgeous, lyrical memoir ... I’ll Tell You When I’m Home shows the power of even a single narrative to resist the deliberate erasure of a people and their homeland, the violence of colonisation.''

''Alyan’s poetic prose encapsulates miles in each sentence and paragraph; joyfully, revisiting a passage is another chance at uncovering a new gift. Her nonfiction narrative voice allows the poet in her to shine, especially as each chapter is told in a series of short glimpses weaving together past and present, the old and the new Hala. ... With I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Alyan has created a record, a story to communicate with those departed and those new to life. In the process, her work is an antidote for others searching for a home they never asked to lose.''

''A Palestinian American writer explores her winding path to motherhood amid the COVID crisis, braiding strands of memory into a shimmering tapestry.''

‘A poignant exploration of her tumultuous path to parenthood, identity, and displacement … The memoir unfolds like the tale of Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights, where Hala becomes the ‘waiting woman,’ reckoning with all the truths of her life before stepping into motherhood … a stunning kaleidoscope of vignettes … More than a story of motherhood and exile, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a testimony of everything at once … a moving tribute to the strength of those forced from their homelands and ruthlessly exploited, as well as a celebration of women’s determination to survive and thrive.''

''Alyan’s prose captures the disjointed nature of grief and healing, exploring what it means to reconstruct one’s identity while navigating the complexities of multiple cultures, bodies, and emotional boundaries.'' ''The long-awaited memoir of the Salt Houses author is not just a story of Palestinian displacement, but also an exploration of motherhood. In her deeply personal autobiography, Alyan shares painful experiences of miscarriages and infertility and ultimately her decision to use a surrogate. As much as it is her own life story, it is also the story of the women in her life: her mother and two grandmothers and their survival through endless war, displacement and exile.'' ''Ultimately, Alyan positions her journey as a powerful resistance to erasure - a way to reclaim a stolen past and secure a narrative for the new life she is about to bring into the world. Superb.''

After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman – the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn – to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love and inheritance.

As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unravelling – a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Suria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.

A stunningly lyrical and brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood and peoplehood, I''ll Tell You When I''m Home is a powerful story of unravelling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.

• | Author: Hala Alyan
• | Publisher: Saqi Books
• | Publication Date: Sep 04, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781849251006
• | ISBN-10: 1849251002