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Everybody
Says
It's
Everything

On sale 3.18.25

In this unforgettable novel from the award-winning author of Brass, twins growing up in America in 1999 unravel larger truths about identity and sibling bonds when one gets wrapped up in the war in Kosovo

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Growing up in Connecticut, adopted twins Drita and Petrit (aka Pete) had no connection to their Albanian heritage. Their lives were all about Barbie dolls, the mall, and roller skating at the local rink. Though inseparable in childhood, their paths diverged as teenagers; Drita was a good girl with and good manners who was going to go to a good college, Pete was a bad boy going nowhere fast. Even their twinhood was not enough to keep them together.

Fast forward to their twenties and Drita has abandoned her graduate studies to move home and take care of their mother, giving up her dreams for the future. She hasn’t heard from her brother in three years when Pete’s girlfriend and their son show up unexpectedly without him and in need of help. Realizing that his child may offer the siblings a second chance at being family, Drita becomes determined to find Pete. But what she ends up discovering—about their connection to their Albanian roots, the war in Kosovo, and the story of their adoption—will surprise everyone, and will either be the thing that brings them together, or tears them apart for good.

From the critically acclaimed author of Brass, Everybody Says It’s Everything tells the story of a family both fractured and foundering, desperate to connect with the other and the world at large, but not knowing how.

Everybody Says It's Everything is a gut-punch of a novel, by turns tender and fierce, heart-breaking and hilarious. Albanian adoptees Drita and Petrit hunger for belonging and purpose. Adrift, will they find themselves and their way back to each other? Against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, and set in Waterbury and in the Bronx, Xhenet Aliu deftly examines class, diaspora, loyalty, and family chosen and received. Powerful and deeply-moving.

—Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

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