Sonia Hussain (b.1991) grew up in the industrial town of Eskilstuna. She has studied law but always nurtured a dream to write fiction. Sonia resides in Berlin, where she works as a global content strategist at Spotify.

Her short story The Bird Game was published in the magazine Faktum in 2022. Hussain’s debut novel, A Thousand Miles Apart, was published by Bokförlaget Bazar in 2024.

A Thousand Miles Apart is a heartwarming and accurate depiction of rootlessness and the search for a home to call one’s own. With equal parts humour and melancholy, Sonia Hussain depicts painful gaps between members of an immigrant family — cultural and generational. It is an entertaining and moving story about a father and a daughter living in diaspora – two people who only have each other but are torn apart by culture clashes and unfulfilled dreams.

Keep an eye out for Sonia Hussain, a Swedish Monica Ali in the making.

Agent: Elin Sandström Lundh

A warm, funny and melancholy tale of growing up and growing old within a diasporic father-daughter relationship.

A Thousand Miles Apart is the touching story of Mizan and Nadira, a father and daughter separated by geography, culture, and a lifetime of unspoken expectations and resentments.

Mizan, haunted by memories of his homeland and the loss of his beloved wife, lives a solitary life. Even though many years have passed, he has never quite acclimatised to living in Sweden and struggles to understand his grown-up daughter, Nadira. After he suffers a nervous breakdown, Nadira persuades Mizan to join a support group to learn the power of positive thinking. Mizan feels absurd and out of place in the conversational therapy group, but soon he makes an unexpected friend.

Meanwhile, in London’s bustling East End, Nadira has just dumped her boyfriend and finds herself suddenly 30 years old, homeless and without even a set of basic cutlery to her name. She sleeps on friends’ couches, drifts around and tries to forget her misery. Things change when a chance meeting with Camilla pushes her to explore new areas of her sexuality. Nadira begins to discover that the life she desires is even farther from Mizan's ideals than she could have ever imagined.

When Nadira returns home to Sweden for Christmas, conflicts between her and Mizan escalate, old scars and wounds are reopened, and their relationship reaches a breaking point. But unexpected sources of help emerge from the chaos.

Insightful, poignant and – not least – funny, A Thousand Miles Apart is a novel about daring to defy expectations in order to become who you truly are. Through the tender bonds of a scarred father-daughter relationship, the novel explores the challenges of rootlessness, sexuality and the second-generation immigrant experience.

Jonas Hassem Khemiri’s The Family Clause meets Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove in this accomplished debut.