This book!! If you had given this to me 25 years ago I would have been hopping around the streets of my city in France saying “THIS THIS THIS!!” Obsessed with Baudelaire, Gautier, and Nerval, I was even more obsessed with the women they wrote about but whose importance was erased. So reading Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know took me right back to those times and had me feeling all kinds of nostalgic. Samira Ahmed did it: she wrote a novel that circles around historical and literary figures and their stories, but she manages to center the two main women and highlight their stories, their lived stories, not the imagined and embellished ones that are stolen from them. It’s a layered and beautiful novel that highlights many issues past and present, where women are erased and stereotyped, never allowed to reap the benefits of their hard work.

Khayyam is spending August in Paris with her parents, an annual tradition in the homeland of her father. American, French, Indian, and Muslim, she navigates her heritage and homelands, while also navigating the end of a relationship, and the embarrassment of failing to prove her worth as a budding art historian. She meets Alexandre Dumas, ancestor of the famous French novelist, and the two embark on a literary treasure hunt, searching for a lost Delacroix painting, and the story of the woman with the raven tresses, a woman who appears in the famous works of Byron, Dumas, and Gautier to name but a few. (Side note that poem in question is pure Byron beauty). Nestled next to Khayyam’s story, is Leila’s story, one that has been concealed and erased, waiting for the right person to unravel it.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite reads this year: it contains a part of myself, the France that I grew up in and still consider my home, the literature I grew up reading and yearning for, and, finally, the right stories being elevated, read, and portrayed in the light of reality, not some kind of imagined, stereotypical awe. Also: I love Khayyam, and I love her parents and their wonderful relationship. 5 million stars!!