Read and discuss literature with our Nordic Book Club Online! Nordic Book Club meets monthly via Zoom to discuss contemporary literature in translation. On January 13, 2026, we’ll be discussing Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s addictively entertaining family saga The Sisters.
Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down—and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters is a big, vivid family story of the highest order—an tour de force that has been longlisted for prizes including the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
The Sisters is available in hardcover, paperback, e-book and digital audio.
“One gawps . . . at its breadth and ambition. [The Sisters is] a transnational tour de force”—Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review
“A classic story about sibling rivalry . . . One of the best novels I’ve ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage”—Fredrik Backman, The New Yorker