The novel is a complex story that is a fusion of fictional magical-realism novel and personal narrative involving the author’s family. The author and his many in-novel persona seeks redemption and personal development through the narration of his family’s dealings with each other as well as the intergenerational conflicts that arise from those interactions. The novel is set against a truly global backdrop ranging from conflict-torn areas of the Middle East to more avant-garde centers of culture and even, quite oddly, the American Midwest.
The author has arranged the narrative into a succession of alternating segments entitled “The Tale” and “The Teller” respectively. Chapters bearing the title “The Tale” involve matters rooted in his past such as delving into Anton Shammas’ youth, his attempts to trace his genealogy, and his attempts at trying to solve the puzzle of another “Anton Shammas”—an alternate, in-novel version of the author whom he uses as his mouthpiece for discussing certain themes. Chapters entitled “The Teller” on the other hand involve the character Anton’s dealings as an adult as he travels through places like Paris and America as a writer. Similar to “The Tale” chapters he also seeks to unravel the identity and meet up with his enigmatic namesake, hoping in the process to discover more about himself and his family.
The novel opens with a narration of Alia Shammas death. Alia is Anton’s paternal grandmother. Her death is a major event in the narrative, one where Anton’s stories and character progression, both past and present, hinges upon. Anton then begins narrating events from her life starting from the first World War; specifically the night when Alia’s husband, Jubran, mysteriously and abruptly abandons her and their children—all six of them—to a life of great difficulty. One of Alia’s three sons, Hanna, later to become Anton the narrator’s father, starts working early in his life to help make ends meet. He starts out as a barber in the village of Fassuta, Galilee; later on he leaves the tonsorial profession to become a shoemaker, a matter of great embarrassment to them. Hanna’s path crosses with the Bitar clan when he is tasked to be an aide in transporting an orphan girl named Laylah Khoury. Laylah is to be adopted into the Bitar clan and is is from this clan where his future bride and mother of Anton, Elaine, hails from.
It is also in this segment of the story where Anton the narrator introduces another pivotal point on the story: the mystery of “the other Anton Shammas.” Anton, the narrator’s namesake, was the son of Jiryes and Almaza Shammas, that died in infancy. Later on in the story, Anton the narrator learns that Anton his namesake may still be alive and that one person may know of his fate: Laylah Khoury, the orphan girl that his father, Hanna, had escorted to the Bitars many years ago. Anton the narrator becomes fixated on finding out Laylah’s fate and begins to investigate on his own. He learns that shortly before the start of the second World War Layla had married a muslim and converted to Islam, changing her name to Surayyah Sa’id.
The narrative then shifts forward in time several decades into the 1980’s. Anton the narrator is now a writer in his thirties. He, along with a friend have travelled back to the Middle East to a small village in the West Bank where Surayyah supposedly lives. Anton the narrator, at this point, makes a couple of strange and contradictory reports: he reports having met up with Surayyah who confirms that his namesake is indeed alive. She reveals that Anton’s cousin was in truth secretly arrogated by a wealthy, childless muslim couple who then names the child Michael Abyad. Michael eventually grows up to becomes a wealthy doctor living in America. He does however make infrequent visits to Lebanon and Palestine for research and to visit relations. Later on however Anton narrates that the meeting was just a story he made up—wishful thinking on his part and a mere imagining of what and how that meeting might have turned out had it really happened. Anton the narrator however does pursue the man called Dr. Michael Abyad, who is an actual doctor and an American who is sympathetic to the plight of the Lebanese refugees.
Now the storyline shifts to “The Teller” the story now set in locations such as Paris and then later, Iowa City. Anton the narrator takes part in an international writer’s convention with the goal of observing the Dr. Abyad so that he can use him as a basis for a fictional hero in a novel he is trying to complete. He also introduces three new characters in this segment: fellow writers of Israeli origin Yehoshua Bar-On, Amira, a French woman of mixed Coptic and Hebrew lineage from Egypt, and his cousin Nadia from Lebanon. Each of these characters represents a particular leaning that the author has on a particular subject and he uses them to as his mouthpiece when discussing them. The successive chapters within “The Teller” segment is “The Teller: Père Lachaise” an odd sort of magic realism microcosm within the larger narrative of the novel. Here Anton the narrator makes a symbolic pilgrimage to the grave of the philosopher Marcel Proust then makes his way to Iowa City with Yehoshua Bar-On. Upon arriving they take up temporary residence in the serendipitously named Mayflower Dormitory where an equally serendipitously named character Mary Nazareth admits them. Anton the narrator and Dr. Abyad eventually meet up and talk. In that meeting he gives Anton a folder containing his supposed personal history, presumably to help him flesh out the character he is writing about a bit better bringing to a close “The Teller” segment of the novel and signals the winding down of events in the novel.
Having been given material to complete his novel and satisfy his personal curiosity Anton the narrator returns to Galilee to his parents’ house just in time to see them getting rid of the duwara, a rock formation located within their family property. The rock is significant to the Shammas family as it is tied to many stories and legends that have been circulating in their household for generations.The destruction of the rock however is a symbolic portent of a death in the family and shortly afterwards Uncle Yusef, the beloved story teller of their family, passes away.
