Up-and-coming Kuwaiti author makes international debut

Kuwait: Like so many others, Layla Al Ammar’s book will probably be banned in Kuwait.

This according to the author herself, whose debut novel, The Pact We Made, is slated for release by Borough Press, a literary fiction imprint of Harper Collins, on March 7, 2019.
Al Ammar’s story is about Dahlia, a young Kuwaiti woman who happens to lead two distinct lives.

In one, she balances a successful career with an active social life, while in the other she is troubled by deep-set anxiety over a secret she can never reveal because of the shame it would bring to her family.

Her 30th birthday is fast approaching, and the pressure she faces from her mother to accept a marriage proposal begins to escalate, leading Dahlia to think of only one thing: escape.

Duality is one of the central themes of the book, and like her protagonist, the author has spent most of her life straddling two worlds.