On May 19, 2026, the Penguin Random House imprint Kokila will publish “Landing in Place: A Graphic Novel,” a coming-of-age story exploring an Egyptian American girl’s search for identity across her college experiences, family life, and the wider world.
The young adult novel, which the publisher described as “poignant,” is the work of what it called a “powerhouse author-illustrator duo”: author Sherine Hamdy and illustrator Myra El Mir. Billed as an update to modern classics such as “Persepolis” and Tahereh Mafi’s “A Very Large Expanse of Sea,” the book illustrates how “the political is personal”. It weaves an Egyptian American family’s narrative with global historical events, spanning the 1956 Suez crisis, the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and contemporary protests for Palestinian rights.
Landing in Place narrative centres on Anisa, a university freshman attempting to follow in her sister Reem’s footsteps at her alma mater. Anisa is on the same pre-medical track and has inherited her sister’s old textbooks, mini-fridge, and hotpot. Despite her preference for studying art, her parents discount the field as a valid career choice. As her prescribed path crumbles, Anisa feels she does not belong among her organic chemistry classmates or the other Muslim students on campus.
After failing her first semester, Anisa begs her parents for time off to visit Cairo and stay with her “beloved grandfather”. The trip provides her with the freedom to have her own experiences, prompting a journey of self-discovery where she begins to develop her artistic voice while confronting familial, societal, and religious expectations. Upon returning to the United States, she finds that many of these expectations have shifted, but learns to rely on the love of friends and family—even those she is frequently at odds with—to remain true to herself.
Hamdy noted that the project originated in 2013 as a “snarky manuscript” titled “Hijabville,” which was based on her “annoyed experiences wearing hijab in my early adulthood”. In early drafts, the hijabi character, Anisa, never spoke, with others constantly projecting assumptions onto her.
“When I decided to give Anisa her voice, I had to trade snark for sincerity,” Hamdy stated. “The result was LANDING IN PLACE – a story that celebrates the beauty in Muslim cultures and hijab instead of rebelling against them”. Through the protagonist’s journey, Hamdy hopes readers will feel empowered “to discover the hidden historical and political traumas that inform their own families, as well as the important link between foreign intervention, neocolonialism, migration, and diaspora”.
Hamdy is a medical anthropologist teaching courses on Middle East culture, comics, and literary anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of “Our Bodies Belong to God,” the co-creator of the graphic novel “Lissa,” and co-editor of the academic series ethnoGRAPHIC for the University of Toronto Press, which publishes works integrating comics and ethnography. Born in New York to Egyptian parents, Hamdy grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Bamako, Mali; and Mexico City, Mexico, and currently resides in Irvine, California, with her husband and two daughters.
El Mir is an illustrator who tells stories through comics, picture books, and activist posters. She grew up in Batha, Lebanon, where she studied fine arts and gender studies. El Mir is a co-founder of Research by Comics—an initiative bringing scholars and artists together—and of Space 27, a former artists’ community house in Beirut. She lives with her dog, Jeanie, and cat, Fara.
Targeted at readers aged 12 and older, the title will be released in paperback (ISBN 9780735229457) for $17.99 and as an ebook (ISBN 9780735229464) for $10.99. Promotional materials indicate that readers can “download high-res images and start reading here”.
The book has garnered starred reviews from trade publications, with Kirkus Reviews describing it as a “measured, thoughtful, and complex coming-of-age story,” Booklist calling it “refreshing, timely, and well-developed,” and School Library Journal noting it is “a riveting read”. Additional praise included a review from Hijabi Librarians, who stated the book “presents a thoughtful, generous account of learning to live with a changing self in an everchanging world, affirming personal growth as continuous and ongoing” for all readers. The outlet Scary Mommy called the work “gorgeous,” while Huda Fahmy, author of the National Book Award Finalist “Huda F Cares?”, described the novel as “deeply emotional and powerful”.
Kokila’s parent company, Penguin Random House, is the world’s largest trade book publisher, with a stated mission of “nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere”. Formed on July 1, 2013, by Pearson and Bertelsmann, the company has been fully owned by Bertelsmann since April 1, 2020. Operating more than 300 brands and imprints across six continents, the publisher comprises adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction trade publishing businesses in English, German, and Spanish across more than 20 countries. It employs over 10,000 people globally and sells more than 600m print, audio, and eBooks annually, releasing over 15,000 new titles per year. Its publishing lists feature hundreds of widely read authors and more than 80 Nobel Prize laureates.
