By a noted Brazilian author, this novel relates the story of several generations of a large family of Lebanese immigrants living in Manaus. Dominating the family is the matriarch, Emilie. The story ranges back and forth in time, told by different narrators, including Hakim, one of Emilie’s sons; Dorner, a photographer who is a family friend; and one of the two boys that Emilie adopts. From the death of her beloved brother Emir before she marries, and the illegitimate pregnancy of her only daughter, Samara, through the tragic accident that kills Samara’s deaf-and-dumb daughter, Soraya Angela, the loss of her husband, and other family disasters, Emilie provides the family’s strength and the unifying thread. Her death and funeral begin and end the book and provide a frame for all the various memories. Hatoum combines a lush mix of Brazilian and Middle Eastern cultures with a poignant story and an impressionistic style. The Tree of the Seventh Heaven was first published in 1989 and won a prestigious Brazilian literary prize. Mary Ellen Quinn

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Originally published in Brazil, where it won a prestigious literary prize in 1989, this quirky first novel relates the saga of a Lebanese immigrant family, a tale as mysterious as the jungle that surrounds their home in Manaus, capital of the Amazon province. Matriarch Emilie’s death is the catalyst for a low-key outpouring of memory and confession by relatives and friends whose voices often seem interchangeable. The narrators include a young girl who was raised from infancy as one of the family; Emilie’s favorite son, Uncle Hakim; Dorner, a German photographer; and Hindie, an old friend. Cumulatively, their stories suggest but never define the truth about Emilie and her turbulent kin. She was a woman “who suffered the death of loved ones and the sorrows of the whole family, and still managed to make each night a festival of pleasure that infected all the rooms.” A devout Christian, she ran away to a Beirut convent when her parents decided to emigrate to Manaus, but her beloved brother Emir threatened to shoot himself if she did not come with them. Although the family prospers in Brazil, Emir, weighed down by secret sorrows, soon commits suicide by jumping in a tributary of [...]

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When Emilie’s parents launch plans to emigrate from Lebanon to a pioneer life in the Brazilian Amazon, she flees her beloved Beirut in despair, intending to become a nun. Emir, her youngest and not entirely stable brother, tracks her down and threatens to shoot himself unless Emilie leaves the religious life immediately. Still despairing, the girl joins her relations in their new, sometimes fantastic existence in the jungle city of Manaus. With her she brings a trunk containing her nun’s habit, the convent’s hypnotic black clock, and other private keepsakes. Decades later, upon her death, Emilie’s extended family gather in Amazonia to ponder memories of the matriarch: her fervent piety, her tempestuous marriage to a devout Muslim, and the secrets she hoarded within the locked trunk. Hatoum, who teaches at the University of the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil, weaves a seamless, memorable family saga of touching and outrageous stories recounted by those who for years loved and feuded with Emilie. Recommended for most fiction collections. – Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.

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Set in the bustling multi-ethnic port of Manaus, Brazil (where Hatoum teaches at the University of the Amazon), this lushly lyrical, rich saga tells of a family of Lebanese immigrants torn by long-kept secrets, feuds and eccentricities. Emilie, the clan’s fervently religious Christian matriarch, who both idolizes and smothers her children, lives surrounded by statues of saints and by birds and animals with whom she converses. Her faith sets her at odds with her stern Muslim husband, extravagant both in love and in argument. Extending from the 1890s to the near-present, the family’s odyssey from Tripoli to Marseilles to the sultry Amazon, narrated in alternating voices, culminates in Emilie’s death and the belated return of her rebellious, sensitive son Hakim after a 20-year absence. Family skeletons include the suicide of Emilie’s withdrawn brother Emir and the irrational stigma surrounding Hakim’s illegitimate deaf-dumb niece Soraya Angela. Winner of Brazil’s Jabuti Prize, this exotic novel, musically translated from the Portuguese, sings of love, homesickness, bravery, broken dreams and the pangs of cultural assimilation.

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