"A Face Like the Moon is tender and terrifying, revelatory and unsparing. Whether they’re in Tahrir Square or Toronto, Mina Athanassious treats his characters with a luminous, redemptive honesty. There’s beauty and grief in these pages that reminded me of the work of James Joyce, and humor and hard-hitting wisdom that put me in mind of my favorite stories by Toni Cade Bambara. Mina Athanassious is the real thing. Pay attention to this voice."
Rachel Kadish, author of the USA Today Bestseller and National Jewish Book Award winner The Weight of Ink
"Athanassious is quite intentionally panoramic, sharing with the reader the sights and sounds and smells of youth in a range of circumstances...[A] collection [that] neatly demonstrate[s] how the borders of the world can at times seem expansive and, at others, paralyzingly small." — Quill & Quire
“Athanassious manages to find beauty in the bleak backdrop [of Egypt’s
Garbage City], telling a moving tale…[Other] stories take readers to
small villages, classrooms, and other locations around the country,
offering a fresh perspective on coming of age tales, packed with
memorable characters and rarely explored locations.” — Open Book
A Face Like the Moon
A Face Like the Moon is the debut short story collection from Coptic Canadian writer Mina Athanassious. The eight stories in this book revolve around the world of young Coptic children living in urban and rural areas of Egypt. "All Good Things Thrown Away" delves into Egypt's notorious "Garbage City" and the lives of Cairo's garbage collectors. The title story moves to a small remote village in southern Egypt where a young ten-year-old boy struggles with a family tragedy. All together, Athanassious's debut collection of short stories offers a truly remarkable and moving look at the lives of Coptic children coming of age in Egypt and marks a bold and original new voice in Canadian fiction.