Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Chris Holmes
Guest: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Episode: "The Sisters" (FSG, 2025)
Date: September 3, 2025

This episode features author Jonas Hassen Khemiri discussing his epic new novel The Sisters, which explores the sweeping, decades-long story of the Mikola sisters—a trio of Tunisian Swedish siblings growing up on the margins of Stockholm, and later remaking themselves in global cities. Khemiri delves into themes of family, belonging, time, and form, blending autofiction with an emotionally charged narrative. The conversation covers the novel’s genesis, its innovative structure, the role of autobiographical elements, approaches to character and identity, and the challenges of writing about home and diaspora.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis and Scope of The Sisters

• Khemiri's Ambition for Scale
  • Khemiri set out to craft a novel larger in scope than any of his previous works:

    “I think it started with...an ambition to kind of create something on a bigger scale than I’d ever done before.” (05:39)

  • Inspired by reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace — especially the effect of a huge canvas and brief but addictive chapters (06:16).

2. Narrative Structure & Playing with Time

• Structural Innovations
  • Chapters are short and propel the reader forward, mimicking the acceleration of time as experienced by the characters and the author himself:

    “I wanted to try to capture time speeding up...the first book takes place over one year, then six months, then three months, then one month, then one week, one day and one minute.” (08:28)

  • The structure mirrors the emotional drives of the characters, creating an "emotional truth" for readers.
• Purpose of Formal Play
  • For Khemiri, formal experimentation is less about imposed constructs and more about sustaining his own curiosity as a writer:

    “Structure for me has always been something that I build in order to keep myself interested in the project.” (10:35)

3. Sentence-Level Style & The Experience of Time

• Long Sentences & Parentheticals
  • The novel’s style often features long, breathless sentences that evoke experiences of anxiety and a resistance to closure:

    “Many of these characters have a hard time ending their sentences. They continue...that everything is connected.” (12:04)

  • Parallels are drawn between the structure of sentences and the characters’ life struggles—especially their inability to say goodbye, deal with loss, or end things.

4. Family Curses, Competing Narratives, and Identity

• Themes of Curses and Contradictory Family Lore
  • The sisters’ mother insists they are cursed: “everything you love, you will lose”—a metaphor for the curse of time and loss (14:21).
  • Their father instead asserts they are descended from builders of the Rockefeller Center, framing them as inheritors of permanence and achievement (15:30).
  • The sisters live between these competing narratives, wrestling with personal and generational trauma versus aspiration.

5. Parentheses, Patterns, and Autobiography

• Formal Experimentation with Parentheses

  • At one point, a sentence unfurls with multiple closing parentheses—a metaphor for thoughts and memories nesting endlessly:

    “What was it, thirteen parentheses at that moment?” (19:16)

  • Khemiri likens arranging thoughts in parentheses and chapters to assembling a book series or conducting chemistry—placing disparate elements side-by-side to watch new patterns emerge.

• Fiction/Nonfiction Friction

  • The narrative alternates between “fictional” chapters and “autobiographical” ones from a character named Jonas, blending fact and fiction in a way Khemiri hadn’t encountered previously:

    “There was a lot of energy between the fictional sections and the so-called non fictional chapters...there was an energy there and...I kept doing it for 6–700 pages.” (23:22)

  • These autobiographical sections allowed Khemiri to make sense of intensely personal memories that felt “too small” or too lifelike for fiction until they were set beside the sisters’ story (24:22).

6. On Home, Belonging & Global Movement

• The Search for Home
  • The sisters and Jonas never feel quite at home—wherever they are, they live in an “almost but never quite” state, both in Stockholm and as they migrate between New York, Paris, and Tunis:

    “They have spent their whole lives feeling almost but never quite...when do we feel at home? When do we feel like we can exist without that doubt?” (42:07)

  • Each sister has different strategies for finding home—through structure, adaptability, or sensory “add-ons.”

7. Evolving Characters & “Superhero” Fantasies

• Humanizing the Sisters
  • Initial drafts attempted to give the sisters “superhero” qualities but shifted when Khemiri realized the importance of letting the characters be deeply, messily human:

    “I had the feeling that the sisters almost sat me down and said, like, we need you to allow us to be human in this book…with all our flaws, with all our mess up, with all our complications.” (32:27)

  • Letting go of control and embracing complexity allowed Khemiri to engage with his own vulnerabilities, including family curses and struggles with depression.

8. Intertextuality and Influences

• Nods to Other Family Epics
  • The sisters’ story deliberately echoes classic family novels, with Chris noting parallels to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters.
  • Khemiri confirms The Makioka Sisters was a talisman on his research shelf while writing:

    “My bookshelf...was suspiciously empty, but the one book that I had on my shelf was the Makioka Sisters.” (51:33)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On structure and inspiration:

  “I wonder what happens if I expand my canvas?” (06:16, Khemiri)

• On time’s acceleration:

  “The structure of the book is...the first book takes place over one year, then six months, then three months, then one month, then one week, one day and one minute.” (08:28, Khemiri)

• On sentence style and theme:

  “Many of these characters have a hard time ending their sentences...they have a hard time saying goodbye. They have a hard time dealing with death. They have a hard time ending their sentences.” (12:04, Khemiri)

• On the competing family myths:

  “The curse basically says, everything you love, you will lose. And ultimately that is the curse of time, right?” (14:21, Khemiri)

  “You’re actually...related to constructors of high rises...maybe not internal, but it’s definitely stable and around.” (15:30, Khemiri)

• On blending fiction and autobiography:

  “I sensed that there was energy there and...I kept doing it for 6–700 pages. And it created something that kept me intrigued.” (23:22, Khemiri)

• On home and security:

  “What does it actually mean to give your kids security?...Isn’t that also security, that you can give your children a sense of whatever happens? You got this.” (28:03–29:19, Khemiri)

• On humanizing his characters:

  “We need you to allow us to be human in this book. We’re not going to have superpowers...we need to have the right to exist in this book...with all our flaws, with all our mess up, with all our complications.” (32:27, Khemiri)

• On globality and feeling “almost but not quite”:

  “...these sisters have spent their whole lives feeling almost but never quite, be it on a dance floor in Stockholm...when do we feel at home?” (42:07, Khemiri)

• On intertextuality:

  “The one book that I had on my shelf was The Makioka Sisters.” (51:33, Khemiri)

Important Timestamps

• 05:18 – Khemiri joins, discusses the novel's origins and ambitions.
• 06:16 – Tolstoy’s influence and the decision to use short, propulsive chapters.
• 08:28 – On capturing the acceleration of time in the novel’s structure.
• 12:04 – Sentence-level style reflecting the characters’ inability to let go.
• 14:21 – Explanation of the sisters’ family curse and competing narratives.
• 19:16 – Discussion of formal experimentation with parentheses.
• 23:22 – On alternating fictional and autobiographical chapters.
• 28:03–29:19 – Relocating his family, and reflections on security.
• 32:27 – Letting go of “superhero” stereotypes to embrace human complexity.
• 42:07 – The characters’ lifelong sense of “almost but never quite” at home.
• 51:33 – The Makioka Sisters as an influence and writing talisman.

Book Recommendations by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (46:26–50:29)

• The Bible (read for research and as part of a new project)
• Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years
  • Particularly valuable for writers working outside their first language
• Selma Lagerlöf, The Treasure (1904)
  • “A remarkable novel with a subtle feminist theme, dark and gothic.”
• Dantiel M. W. Moniz, Milk Blood Heat
  • “A remarkable book”—the recent title he most often gives as a gift.

Tone & Style

The episode is warm, deeply reflective, and often confessional in tone. Khemiri and Holmes explore the craft of fiction and the emotional stakes of storytelling with both intellectual rigor and humility. Khemiri is candid about his process, the vulnerabilities that surface in writing, and the indispensable role of literary art in stitching together the disjointed experiences of his own and his characters’ lives.