A novel about connections made and lost, No Place Strange follows four people affected by the actions of a beautiful Palestinian terrorist named Rafa Ahmed. Lydia is a young Jewish Canadian woman running from the truth about her father’s involvement with Rafa, who may be implicated in his murder. Lydia escapes to Greece, where she meets Farid, a young Lebanese man who has left his home for Athens. Farid’s mother Mariam, once Rafa’s professor, is struggling to maintain a normal life in Beirut in the midst of civil war, while his cousin Mouna is a political activist dangerously obsessed with Rafa. Lydia and Farid fall in love, but any possibility for real happiness is jeopardized by Arab?Israeli hostilities, the capriciousness of fate, and a past that neither of them can quite escape.
“No Place Strange is beautifully and tautly written, the work of a humane novelist wise to the subtleties of character that emerge even during periods of swift, shocking event. Diana Fitzgerald Bryden conveys both the political and the deeply personal aspects of tumultuous times with an emotional and intellectual resonance that remains entirely, tragically pertinent.”???Joan Barfoot, author of Exit Lines and Luck

DIANA FITZGERALD BRYDEN is the author of two books of poetry: Learning Russian (Mansfield Press, 2000), nominated for the Pat Lowther Award, and Clinic Day (Brick Books, 2004). She moved to Toronto from England as a teenager, and still lives there. No Place Strange is her first novel, and she is currently working on a second.

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