Son of Sin

Poet Omar Sakr's debut novel is a fierce and fantastic force that illuminates the bonds that bind families together as well as what can break them.

An estranged father. An abused and abusive mother. An army of relatives. A tapestry of violence, woven across generations and geographies, from Turkey to Lebanon to Western Sydney. This is the legacy left to Jamal Smith, a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the dark. When every thread in life constricts instead of connects, how do you find a way to breathe? Torn between faith and fear, gossip and gospel, family and friendship, Jamal must find and test the limits of love.

In this extraordinary work, Omar Sakr deftly weaves a multifaceted tale brimming with angels and djinn, racist kangaroos and adoring bats, examining with a poet's eye the destructive impetus of repressed desire and the complexities that make us human.

About the Author

Omar Sakr is an award-winning Arab Australian poet, born of Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants. The Lost Arabs (University of Queensland Press, 2019), won the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the John Bray Poetry Award, and the Colin Roderick Award.

Omar's poetry has been published in English, Arabic, and Spanish, in numerous journals and anthologies. Omar has performed his work nationally and internationally. He lives in Sydney. Son of Sin is his first novel.