The Sisters

In The Sisters, inherited family narratives and traumas function as self-fulfilling prophecies that dictate the characters’ relationships and self-perceptions. The novel argues that these cycles, passed down from one generation to the next, require a direct, often painful confrontation with the past. The most prominent example is the Mikkola family “curse,” a belief instilled by their mother, Selima, that shapes their every action. This myth runs parallel to the narrator Jonas’s own struggle with the internalized voice of his hyper-critical father. Through these intertwined stories, Jonas Hassen Khemiri demonstrates that escaping intergenerational trauma is a messy, ongoing process of rewriting one’s internal script rather than achieving a clean, final liberation.

The Mikkola sisters’ lives are governed by their mother’s paranoid belief that they’re under a curse that “everything [they] love will get taken from [them]” (53). This narrative becomes a self-sabotaging blueprint for their adult lives. Ina, the eldest, lives in constant fear that her boyfriend, Hector, will leave her, a fear that nearly drives him away. Anastasia, the youngest, is drawn to destructive relationships, most notably with Mathias, which reinforces a pattern of chaos and loss. Evelyn, the middle sister, runs from any form of commitment, sabotaging her relationship with Simon and ultimately fleeing her life in Sweden. The curse provides a framework for understanding their misfortunes, but it also actively creates them by predisposing the sisters to expect and therefore enact abandonment and failure. Evelyn’s journey to New York to find her aunt, the “real” Selima, is a quest to confront the source of this family myth and, in doing so, break its hold over her and her sisters.

Jonas’s personal story offers a more clinical but equally harrowing parallel. He has internalized the voice of his absent and critical father, which manifests in adulthood as a persistent, self-hating inner critic he calls “the Hyena.” This voice relentlessly attacks his worth, sabotages his relationships, and stifles his creative work. Unlike the sisters’ mythic curse, Jonas’s trauma is pathologized and treated with modern therapy. Through cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, he learns to externalize this inherited voice, transforming it from a terrifying predator into a “pathetic chipmunk.” His struggle shows that even without a supernatural narrative, the wounds of parental abandonment and criticism can create a powerful internal cycle of self-destruction that requires deliberate, conscious effort to break.

Ultimately, the novel suggests that breaking these cycles is a continuous struggle. After confronting her aunt, Evelyn learns that the “curse” was born from a human betrayal, yet the emotional residue remains. In the end, the sisters are reunited in a hospital room, their bond intact but their lives still marked by the fallout of their past: Ina’s marriage has collapsed, and Evelyn is facing a health crisis. Similarly, Jonas finds a coping mechanism for his Hyena, but it’s only a management technique, rather than a definitive resolution. The novel closes with a fragile, hard-won truce between the sisters, suggesting that freedom from intergenerational trauma comes from learning to live with the ghosts of the past without letting them dictate the future.