Najwa Barakat’s Oh, Salaam! tells the story of three friends—an explosives expert, a sniper, and a torturer—whose lives are transformed by their involvement in a civil war in an unnamed Arab country, and by their relationship with the novel’s anti-heroine, Salaam. Two of the friends live to see the end of the war but struggle to survive the arrival of peace and to make a life for themselves in a society that has no use for ex-paramilitaries. As the...
