Alligator

The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat’s collection are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman performing burial rites for her brother in “Ghusl,” or a great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in “Once We Were Syrians.”

Alzayat’s stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.

The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.

Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.*2021 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Finalist
*2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award, Finalist
*2021 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, Finalist
*2020 Short Story Prize, Longlist
*2021 Arab American Book Awards, Honorable Mention

*A Best Book of 2020 —Bethanne Patrick, Lit Hub

"A stellar debut... Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present."
—Colin Groundwater, GQ

"The richly detailed short fictions in this debut from a Damascus-born scribe form an intricate, breathtaking mosaic of modern Muslim life."
—Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine

“This debut short story collection from Syrian-American writer Dima Alzayat captures the many ways we can be displaced and made to feel 'other.' Comprised of nine compelling tales of grief, hope and search for meaning, Alligator and Other Stories explores identities caught in the crossfire between two cultures as well as the reality of the female migrant experience.”
—Elias Jahshan, The New Arab

"Alligator contains several stories of breathtaking power, worth noting since the title story alone, based on the true story of a Syrian man lynched in Florida in 1929, is worth the price of several volumes. Dima Alzayat combines superb writing with razor-sharp imagination and focuses on social injustice, racial violence, and global immigration."
—Bethanne Patrick, LitHub

"Alzayat’s slim, powerful debut collection showcases the author’s deep empathy and imagination in stories about grief, assimilation, and trauma... This intelligent collection is a force to be reckoned with."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A stellar debut... Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present. Here and everywhere, Alligator is a collection about the power and limitations of empathy. An exciting debut collection exploring the local and global valences of trauma."
—Colin Groundwater, GQ

"Startling, often shocking... brilliant."
—Eithne Farry, Daily Mail (UK)

"Like the best collage artists, Alzayat cuts apart America’s accepted history and pastes it back together into something completely startling and fresh."
—Sara Batkie, Chicago Review of Books

Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, Syria, grew up in San Jose, California, and now lives in Manchester, U.K. She was the winner of a 2018 Northern Writers’ Award, the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize and 2015 Bernice Slote Award, runner-up in the 2018 Deborah Rogers Award and the 2018 Zoetrope: All-Story Competition, and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Bridport Prize. Her stories have appeared in Esquire, Prairie Schooner, Bristol Short Story Award Anthology, Bridport Prize Anthology, and Enizagam.