Once a Stranger

Zoya Patel, award-winning writer, editor and podcaster, and author of the memoir No Country Woman, a book that discusses themes of race, religion and feminism, brings us her first work of fiction. Once a Stranger is a moving novel in which Patel continues to examine these issues in a vividly depicted narrative using ‘now’ passages alternating with ‘before’ passages of a family’s move from India to Australia, and the prejudices and challenges they face in maintaining culture and family ‘rules’.

The book opens with an email from Laila to her sister, Ayat, asking her to come home to see their dying mother. We discover that Ayat has not seen or communicated with her family for six years and has moved away from Canberra to live in Melbourne with her partner. She learns to live with the grief of separation, but continues to wonder why she still wants to be close to her mother and sister even though they’ve chosen to reject her. Ayat is deeply impacted by the estrangement and although she moves on with her life without her family, she continually questions if their bonds can ever truly be broken. What would her life have been like, if, instead of choosing the partner and life that they rejected, she had chosen her family instead?

When she receives the news about her mother, Ayat knows she has to see them. As she drives towards her family in Canberra, she asks herself what she’ll face when she gets there. Once a stranger, always a stranger? Or will she be accepted back into the family at a time of crisis? An important Australian story illustrating the universal questions of home, culture and love, in a compelling and warm-hearted way.