Keija was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there for twelve years before her family moved to Austin, Texas. Her work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, Playa Summer Lake, the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, and the Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, where she was a My Time Fellow. Her short fiction, essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in the New York Review of Books Daily, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Lonely Planet travel-writing anthologies, World Literature Today, Slate, The Arkansas International, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Slice Magazine, Salon, Five Chapters, New Delta Review, Marie Claire, Off Assignment, and elsewhere. John Mandel, and was selected as a Best Book of the Year by the Kansas City Star, Lone Star Literary Life, Missouri Life and Vox Magazine. Her second novel, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis, won an Alex Award from the American Library Association, was chosen as Book of the Month by Emily St. In fall 2019, it was published in Arabic by the Syrian Ministry of Culture. The novel earned a Michener-Copernicus award, was long-listed for the Chautauqua Prize, was chosen as Book of the Month by National Geographic Traveler, and was selected as a Best Book of the Middle East Region 2013 by Turkey’s Today’s Zaman newspaper. The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.Keija Parssinen is the author of the novel The Ruins of Us, which was published in the US (HarperCollins), UK (Faber& Faber), Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Italy (Newton Compton Editori) and around the Middle East. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, they all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie's consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving the country, her life, and her family behind. More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. The Ruins of Us is a compelling, timely debut novel that explores the loneliness of expatriate life and the dangers of intolerance, as well as the things we'll do for love.

The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen