Dearborn: Stories - Paperback

by Ghassan Zeineddine (Author)

Winner of the 2023 Khayrallah Book Prize

Finalist for the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award for Debut Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

A Washington Post Best Book of September - Named a Best Book of the Year at Electric Lit, Chicago Public Library, Powell's, and Kirkus Reviews

"Sly, straight-faced, tenderly wicked. . . . A classic American short story collection."―Michael Chabon

A sharp, tender, and uproariously funny portrait of the lives of Arab American community members in Dearborn, Michigan.

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans.

By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces readers to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community, and how it is that we help one another survive.

Author Biography

Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Ohio.