Call Me Zebra

In Bibi Abbas Abbas Hosseini, who renames herself Zebra after her father's death, Oloomi (Fra Keeler) presents the reader with a prickly, funny, often-exasperating character whose story comes to encompass the trials and tribulations of the many exiles in our modern world. This expansive novel spans both the globe from Iran to New York City and the picaresque adventures of its title character. Young Bibi's family fled Saddam Hussein's violent regime, but while the girl and her father made their way to New York, her mother was killed during the journey. When Bibi's father dies more than ten years later, the young woman decides to undertake a "Grand Tour of Exile," retracing in reverse the route she and her father took from Iran to America. Along the way, she gathers other exiles—a group she dubs "The Pilgrims of the Void"—and meets Ludo Bembo, a young man with whom she reluctantly falls in love. Yet Zebra never abandons her first and truest love, the written word. Told by her father to "trust nobody and love nothing except literature," Zebra weaves philosophy, literary theory, and historical knowledge into her own personal "manifesto" while seeking and finding connections—both hidden and overt—between and among the world's works of literature. That this lonely, brave, fiercely intelligent young woman begins to realize she must connect to other people (not just books) makes this novel all the more poignant. Leila Buck's narration, which brings Zebra's story to life in all its complexity, is a perfect fit.