Midhat Kamal is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus, a town in Ottoman Palestine. In 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France, and embarks on a love affair that ends in catastrophe and alters him profoundly. A dreamer, a romantic, an aesthete-he returns to Nablus heartbroken to fins Palestine under British rule, and the entire region erupting with nationalist fervor. Midhat must find a way to cope with his conflicting loyalties and the expectations of his community, just as new tensions create fissures between-and within-families. The story of this young man?s life develops alongside the idea of a nation, as Midhat and those close to him confront what It means to strive for independence in a world that seems on the verge of falling apart. Against a landscape of political change that continues to define the Middle East today, The Parisian explores questions of power and identity, the subject and the subjected, the enduring and multiple power of love, and the uncanny ability of the past to trespass onto the present.