Three Parties

A queer Palestinian refugee plans to come out at his elaborate birthday dinner party in this tragicomic modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Firas Dareer wakes up on his twenty-third birthday with a sense of purpose: today he'll jump from a Stage 3 to a Stage 6 in his self-determined Coming Out Scale, professing his sexuality to a captive audience of immediate and extended family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and neighbours. But despite the meticulously designed invitations, carefully chosen place settings and floral centerpieces, painstakingly curated playlist, and agonizingly fretted-over menu, factors begin to spin out of his control.

Threatening to thwart his big moment are his younger brother, whose mental fragility requires him to be monitored at all times; his cantankerous grandfather, who's just completed his third escape from the retirement home; the Dareers' embittered housekeeper (and Firas's arch nemesis), who could scoop the story before he gets the chance; his harried boss, who on this of all days calls him into work at the architecture firm, where his colleagues share a talent for butchering his name; and his mother, whose accidental text message may have blown the cover of an illicit extra-marital affair. There's also the fact that Firas too has found himself in a love triangle of sorts, choosing between soft and steady Tyrese and fiery Kashif, who makes a sport out of demonstrating how Palestinian he is.

As the future Firas has precisely architected for himself slips further out of his grasp, the past comes crashing in like a wrecking ball. Sharp, darkly funny, and full of surprises, Three Parties pays twisted homage to a literary classic, gleefully upends the western coming-out narrative, and sensitively explores the traumas and pressures faced by Palestinian immigrants--all in the span of a single life-changing day.

Author: Ziyad Saadi
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 08/26/2025
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780735250963

About the Author
ZIYAD SAADI is a Palestinian Canadian writer and filmmaker based in Vancouver. He is a Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist and winner of the MPAC Hollywood Bureau pilot writing competition. He has contributed to Indiewire, The Independent, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, and his short story "The Third or Fourth Casualty" is featured in the Palestinian speculative fiction anthology Thyme Travellers. He holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from Concordia University.