Out of the gutter is a most unusual read: A saga that mixes tragedy, and a dark, off the wall humor.

A daughter and her mother in an apartment in London. Every evening, they meet, with an occasional glass of whisky, going over the times, not so long ago, where they were a large family, all women, living in Damascus.

Sudan, 1968, the military coup taking place in Khartoum echoes all the way to the small rural town of Hajer Narti, where the body of a young girl has just been found in the Nile.

Told in the first person, Asma Al Atawna’s debut coming of age novel captures with beautiful and surprising honesty the life of an eponym young woman.