The Book Prize Index

I'll Tell You When I'm Home: A Memoir

Hala Alyan

"After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman--the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn--to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance. As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling: a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis.

Memoir & AutobiographyMemoir & Autobiography · high confidenceMemoir & Autobiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Memoir & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> BiographyMemoir & Personal HistoryFamily Biography

Award History

0 wins · 2 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or AutobiographyMajor2026FinalistSecondary source
National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and AutobiographyMajor2025LonglistOfficial source
View all award history (2)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact. Automated checks have flagged this profile for extra review.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Hala Alyan90%

  2. 02 Central places

    • Beirut75%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    Using a surrogate, Hala Alyan confronts her narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance, while past traumas and addictions threaten to resurface as her husband and Beirut’s situation unravel her life.

    Model confidence 55%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    30 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 72%.