Crescent
By: Diana Abu-Jaber.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 349
Subjects: Arab American women -- Fiction; Cookery, Lebanese -- Fiction; College teachers -- Fiction; Arab Americans -- Fiction; Women cooks -- Fiction; Restaurants -- Fiction; Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: "Thirty-nine-year-old Sirine, never married, lives with a devoted uncle and an adoring dog named King Babar in the Persian- and Arab-American community of Los Angeles known as Irangeles. She works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by cooking - until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature professor starts dropping by for a little home cooking.

Falling in love with Hanif brings Sirine's whole heart to a boil - stirring up memories of her parents and questions about her own identity as an Arab American.".

"Meanwhile, a host of magnificent characters do their best to interfere with her life: her endlessly patient and thoroughly appealing uncle, who spins a magical story about an Arab slave who escapes his masters by pretending to drown (and ends up in Hollywood); her unrequited admirer, Nathan, an art photographer with disturbing obsessions and a dark past; and Umm Nadia, her saucy, matchmaking boss, who tells Sirine's fortune in the coffee grounds at the bottom of her cup."--BOOK JACKET.