A queer Syrian refugee reckons with a life spent out of place.

Writing this memoir is a betrayal. So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past hed rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.

Starting with his familys humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes readers on an epic, border-crossing journey: to the citys underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at a secluded villa in Cairo; through Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, a reckless hoax that threatens the safety of Syrias LGBTQ+ community, and a traumatic six-week imprisonment; to beaches and sunsets with friends in Beirut; to an arrival in Vancouver thats not as smooth as it promised to be; and ultimately to a life of hard-won comfort and love.

What emerges is a powerful refutation of the oversimplified refugee narrativea book that holds space for joy alongside sorrow, for nuance and complicated ambivalences. Written with fearless intimacy, Crooked Teeth is a singular achievement in which a master storyteller learns that his greatest story is his own.

Paperback | 304 pages | 5.48″ x 8.23″