LitHub ’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “I am forever changed after reading this book.” —Javier Zamora, author of Solito From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home. Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, Fire in Every Direction balances humor and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness—desire and resistance—is passed down through generations. In 1948, Tareq’s grandmother, Eva, would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, Rima, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle class life—still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi. After relocating to London for college, Tareq hopes to put aside his past, and begins to work through an understanding of self as a queer man. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him: hushed whispers overheard, stories of his mother’s years as an activist in Beirut and her return to Palestine during a moment of calm. Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home. Eventually, tracing the journey of his family before him, Tareq returns to Palestine. This is an account of finding oneself through histories of dispossession and reclaiming what has been silenced. "Acclaimed scholar and analyst Baconi chronicles his coming of age as a young gay man and defiant Palestinian. A brilliant and wrenching tale of personal and political awakening." —Booklist (starred review) "Lyrical and moving, Baconi's excellent memoir describes a people in real danger of being forgotten as well as a land where hope sstreaddles walls." —Library Journal "In this poignant autobiography, queer Palestinian writer and activist Baconi tenderly explores identity, nationality, and family history [....] With lyrical prose and shrewd narrative instincts, Baconi transmutes hardship into comfort. Readers will find it difficult not to be moved." —Publishers Weekly "Intimate and vulnerable, creating an unsparing portrait...for all the tragedies, however, it is ultimately a book filled with love, from and for his own family, for the region, Palestine and queer culture." —The Guardian "It is difficult to read Tareq Baconi’s intimate, mesmerizing meditation on dispossession and not think about how much safer it would have been to not write a book like this, to leave a dangerous past undisturbed. In stunning detail—both physical and emotional—Baconi traces a story of personal and communal alienation, longing, and liberation. Drawn here in beautiful, crushing clarity is an account of what systems of degradation, fear and theft can do to a person, a society, a world. That Baconi has managed to do all this in a memoir that still feels so firmly rooted in love is a marvel. Fire in Every Direction is a marvel." —Omar El Akkad, New York Times bestselling author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This “In this moving and generous memoir, Tareq Baconi refuses to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing models a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones. Fire in Every Direction is a beautiful account of one man's confrontation with the histories, silences, and desires—both communal and private—that have made him who he is.” —Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost and Recognizing the Stranger "In this poignant autobiography, queer Palestinian writer and activist Baconi tenderly explores identity, nationality, and family history." —The Millions "I love this book. It is beautifully woven and registers acutely at the intimate and global levels of life." —Judith Butler, bestselling author of Who's Afraid of Gender "In Fire in Every Direction , we not only see how the oppression of a people has affected one Palestinian family, but how oppression in all forms—colonialism, patriarchy, homophobia, to name a few—creates dishonesty and masks within all of us. Tareq Baconi offers us a love letter, a blueprint on how to craft a life that questions the present, dreaming a better future in the process. By reading this beautifully honest memoir, we can learn to shed w