Every Exit Brings You Home
A Novel
24 April 2026
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
A profound, bittersweet portrait of a Gazan immigrant’s heroic efforts to heal his community and birth love from tragedy.
Readers are rarely lukewarm on Naeem Murr’s work, which has been compared by critics to an astonishing array of greats: Margaret Atwood, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Flannery O’ Connor, Robert Penn Warren, William Faulker, Vladimir Nabokov, and more. His novels are likely to elicit wonderment, as in “the perfect book” (Business Day, South Africa) and “the best novel I've read in years” (Christian Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss). And in this, his first book in two decades, the conflicts, griefs, and hopes of an immigrant community in a Chicago condo come to represent those of the wounded world we all must share.
As a financial crisis looms, Jamal “Jack” Shaban is trying to save his neighbors from bankruptcy. But who is Jack, really? For his flight attendant colleagues, he’s an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Birdy knows nothing about Dimra, Jack’s traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Nor does Dimra know about Jack’s attraction to Marcia: an angry single mom new to the building. The resulting tangle of love, desire, and conflict returns Jack to the violence of 1980s Gaza, where a taboo affair nearly destroyed his life.
A man of many sides—adulterer, devoted husband, fixer, community leader, liar, and the survivor of human and cosmic cruelty in both the past and the novel’s present—Jack is a paragon of both desire and hope, someone who has committed to love because the alternative is utter darkness.
A gorgeous blend of gentle comedy and poignant tragedy, of blasted hopes and one man’s indomitable dedication to the well-being of others, this is a book to love and never forget.
Reviews
"For too long, Naeem Murr’s name has been whispered among judging panels instead of toasted in book clubs. Since his 1998 debut, The Boy he has received the kind of critical accolades that confer honor but not sales. His latest novel, with the poetic if enigmatic title Every Exit Brings You Home, deserves to awaken a much larger audience. This is one of those rare stories that feels at once universal and impossibly strange, rooted in the ordinary challenges of the American Dream but lashed to horrors unfolding on the other side of the planet." — Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Timely and urgent, Every Exit Brings You Home explores Jack’s hopes, sorrows, and regrets—and, by proxy, those of immigrants everywhere." — Harper's Bazaar
"Murr’s richly textured narrative offers many such surprisingly tender moments. They are essential components of a novel that is determinedly hopeful without blinking at the possibility of cruelty and betrayal in intimate relations, let alone their near certainty in the endless cycle of killing and revenge in Gaza. A beautiful final image embodies the mingled realities of love and pain that echo through the book. Naeem Murr’s expansive talent animates every page of Every Exit Brings You Home." — Wendy Smith, Boston Globe
"Every Exit Brings You Home?encapsulates the pain of longing, and the struggle of letting life in when your heart feels like it’s turned to stone." — Leah Rachel Von Essen, Chicago Review of Books
"A heartbreaking and thrillingly suspenseful story about tragic histories and new beginnings." — Jenny Offill, author of Weather
"This is the best novel I’ve read in years, with everything a reader could want: complex characters, political wisdom, comedy, tragedy, soul. Naeem Murr has a particular gift for conveying the intimacies between characters, but his genius is for drawing his readers into the world of these intimacies and lives so vividly they won’t want to leave it." — Christian Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
"This poignant, at times hilarious, at times tragic, always compelling novel knocked me out. It’s both intimate and expansive, digging deep into the emotional intricacies of love and into the devastation of war and the longing for family and home. As soon as I finished it, I bought the author’s other books, so loathe was I to leave his assured, even brilliant, company." — Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
"Urgent, unflinching, and impossible to ignore, Every Exit Brings You Home will linger in the imagination long after the last page." — Diana Abujaber, author of Crescent and Fencing with the King
"This fiercely moving novel is a gorgeous account of the parallel tracks we all contain: the one that takes us into the past (and brings the past constantly forward) and the other that moves us through the world we are always in the process of creating. I loved it." — Ann Packer, author of Some Bright Nowhere
"A great novel: Beautifully written, timely, and as enjoyable as it is heartbreaking." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The much-lauded Murr’s latest work is laden with cultural touchstones—sexuality, gender identity, immigration, and economic inequities... An edgy portrait of self-sacrifice and irreconcilable allegiances." — Carol Haggas, Booklist
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