A review by fiendfull
Sisters in Arms by Shida Bazyar

4.0

Sisters in Arms is a novel about three friends, racism, and expectations. Kasih, our narrator, is reunited with childhood best friends Hani and Saya as someone they knew before is getting married. Having grown up in Germany dealing with racism, being poor, and being women, the three have different views on struggles and injustice, but now Saya is obsessed with the trial of right-wing terrorists and the actions of one night might change everything. 

 

This is a very distinctive novel, told through an unreliable first person narrator, Kasih, who uses this position to play around with assumptions and expectations, as well as imagining scenes that didn't happen in the past and moving between the 'present' action and what happens when they were younger. The effect is Kasih telling you stories, moving between stories, rather than a straightforward narrative, and complicates ideas of a single narrative, a single version of the truth. Add to this the fact that Kasih imagines what other people do or think, and you get a book that forces you to consider the fact it is impossible to really know other people's perspectives. 

 

Due to the style of narration and meandering structure of the book, it is less about the plot and what happens as what might've happened, what you think happened, and what happened before. Kasih and Saya are particularly distinctive characters, and through a constructed, subjective viewpoint you see how they are both flawed and full of their own assumptions, as well as having deal with so many of other people's assumptions, micro-aggressions, and lack of understanding. It might not feel like a satisfying story to some people, as the ending leaves a decent amount of ambiguity, but it isn't a book that is just about some events happening. 

 

Sisters in Arms is a book with a pointed playfulness in its relation to the reader, drawing them in and making its own assumptions about them. People drawn in by the blurb and title's promise of friendship might find it a different book to what they might expect, as it is a book about someone telling a story, and about why people tell stories to protect themselves, though the friendship is central to it.