The Sisters

Jonas Hassen Khemiri is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, known for works that explore themes of identity, language, and family. Born to a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father, Khemiri draws on his own background to inform the plot of The Sisters. This is a literary mode known as autofiction, in which the author blends autobiographical elements with fictional narrative. This technique deliberately blurs the line between reality and invention, encouraging readers to question the nature of storytelling and memory. In the case of The Sisters, the novel’s narrator is a writer named Jonas who shares the author’s half-Tunisian heritage and even his experience as a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. In an interview with Adam Dalva for BOMB, Khemiri acknowledged that the inclusion of personal memory was always an intentional part of the project of writing The Sisters: 

I just sensed that once I put fictional sister and personal memory side by side, the book vibrated with something. […] It gave meaning to memories that I haven’t really been able to understand before, because I started looking at them through the fictional lens of the sisters. Parts of myself that I have spent years hiding and judging (Dalva, Adam. “Jonas Hassen Khemiri by Adam Dalva.” BOMB, 25 Sept. 2025).

By creating a narrator who so closely resembles himself, Khemiri invites a metatextual reading of the novel. In the later chapters of the novel, the character of Jonas embarks on a project to write a novel about the Mikkola sisters, turning Khemiri’s narrative into a self-referential work. When Jonas shares his manuscript with one of the sisters, Evelyn, she continuously points out its inaccuracies and fictionalizations, acknowledging the invented aspects of Khemiri’s story. Consequently, the story becomes about the authorial process of observing, remembering, and mythologizing the people who shape our lives. The novel’s disclaimer that it’s a “fiction” thus becomes an ironic commentary on the inherent subjectivity of all storytelling, a central theme that Khemiri explores throughout the text.