Whether or not you consider yourself a #bookstagrammer on social media, chances are, you’ve seen a book cover with gold embossed text and a lemon-dotted tree in shades of blue, on your feed. Although Zoulfa Katouh’s debut novel, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow, released in 2002, it has remained firmly in the spotlight, winning awards, accolades and five-star reviews from readers in various corners of the world.
“I honestly had no idea it would be such a success,” Katouh tells Vogue Arabia. The Syrian-Canadian writer is based in Switzerland, but lived in Sharjah for 15 years, and is returning to the UAE next month for the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature to speak about her best-selling novel.
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As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow tells the heart-wrenching story of Salama, who lives in Syria and spends her days helping save lives at a hospital, yet is motivated to keep moving forward for her pregnant best friend, Layla. Tear-jerking scenes with a completely unexpected twist, send readers down a journey of remorse and also, reflection.
Katouh was inspired to write about Syria when her peers in the West would ask her questions about her homeland, unaware of its situation. She initially intended for As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow to be a YA novel for teens, seeing a gap in the market for fiction stories about Syria targeting younger readers, but witnessed it “break the boundaries of age” after its release. She was also grateful to see that the story resonated with readers across the globe, reaching beyond the confines of the Middle East. “I had some worries that readers who aren’t Arab or Muslim wouldn’t be able to identify with characters that are, but I was wrong, and I’m really glad I was,” she says. “This story touches on themes that are universal to everyone, like hope, feeling alone when you’re going through hardship, familial love and romance.”
While As…
