The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi, trans. Jonathan Wright, book review

The young Kuwaiti author gives the silent army of servants a voice at last

Any visitor to the Gulf states will come across a discreet legion of Asian servants and workers. This brave and compassionate novel by a young Kuwaiti author gives that silent army a voice at last. Winner in 2013 of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, The Bamboo Stalk compels attention as a tender, frank and absorbing story of a young man trapped between two worlds. He finds that "it's my destiny to spend my life looking for name, a religion and a country".

Josephine, a Filipina maid in the Kuwaiti household of the proud and snobbish Taroufs, has a child with Rashid – the clan's bookish, friendly and idealistic son. They marry, but family pressure forces Rashid to divorce this lowly wife and send mother and baby back to the Philippines. The Bamboo Stalk –named for the adaptable plant that will grow "without roots in any piece of ground" – tells the first-person story of this child, José. He embarks on a quest for belonging, as a hybrid creature who lacks a "single, clear identity".

Set in the Philippines, the book's first half connects exploitation and rootlessness at home and abroad. José grows up with his aunt, Mama Aida, an embittered former prostitute. He forges a close bond with Aida's rebel daughter Merla, blonde offspring of a European client. Saud Alsanousi brings warmth and empathy to his bright scenes of slum life, where grandfather Mendoza suffers the unending trauma of the Vietnam War, "still raging inside him", and a precious fridge arrives "like a warship home from victory in battle".

Aged 18, José travels to Kuwait to seek a place in his father's nation. Rashid has long ago died a hero, resisting Saddam Hussein's invasion. Yet the haughty Taroufs can never accept his half-Filipino son, for his existence "reduced the family's status in society". Parked in an annexe, he finds another friendship with his free-spirited half-sister, Khawla. "Tarouf" means a net and, as she says, "we can move only as much as the net allows".

Through José's ever-curious eyes, Alsanousi dissects the strict hierarchies of Kuwaiti society. Individuals do show affection, but social norms reject the half-caste kid. He feels torn between faiths as well as cultures, striving to marry the Catholicism of his childhood with a tolerant Islam but fearing that he must become "the prophet of a religion that was mine alone".

Crisply captured in Jonathan Wright's translation, Alsanousi lends José a voice that spans naivety, wonder and acute sensitivity. Imagining himself as "a grain of pollen or a speck of dust", inhaled by Kuwait but expelled again, José plans a return "home" to the Pacific. This touching novel ends with a glimpse of hope.