The Chain

Critics Review

• A jaw-dropping manhunt, The Chain is also an ode to how women support, protect and uphold each other in a misogynistic world. Read then pass it on

  STYLIST, Book of the Month

• I loved The Chain. Urgent, unflinching and yet so full of love and nurture for women and womanhood, it is chilling and it is familiar and it is redemptive to read and beautifully written. This book makes women feel seen and understood, it is deeply powerful

  JOSIE LONG

• I was utterly floored by The Chain. In its astonishing specificity it finds a way to speak to huge and unsettling aspects of the human experience. It has the pace of a thriller and the weight of poetry. I can immediately think of so many women whose hands I want to press it into. I am immediately, selfishly desperate to discuss it

  EVIE WYLD

• The Chain is a devastating account of brutal misogyny told with the careful precision of a brilliant storyteller. The power of Suleyman’s language combined with her poetic words culminate in a story that has been etched on my soul forever. A truly incredible feat as both memoir and story, The Chain took my breath away from the first page and did not let go of me till the very last. A must-read, a must-have and one of my biggest recommendations of 2024

  NIKITA GILL

• The Chain made me angry, laugh and cry. I tore it apart and gobbled it up. It is stunning. STUNNING

  LAURA DOCKRILL

• The Chain is revolutionary, it is necessary, succinct in detail and precise, it is both empowering and powerful, deeply moving and courageous, vivid and candid. A compassionate and brilliant memoir from Chimene Suleyman, to read it is to be invited to reach inside these pages and hold the space, to replenish your own truth and grief, and find courage for many years to come

  SALENA GODDEN

• The Chain is an important book which highlights the fear of simply being a woman in what is still a man’s world and how the only way we’re going to come out on top is if we unite

  ARAMINTA HALL

• Consistently acute . . . [Suleyman’s] book is impressive as much for the author’s skill and elegance as for the terror of the story that fuels it. A maddening tale told with insistence, insight, and beauty

  KIRKUS, Starred Review

• A bruising, moving, harrowing and staggeringly beautiful memoir. The Chain is a rare and special book, and I’m grateful to have read it

  CHRIS WHITAKER

• The Chain is thrilling in its exposure of manipulative private romantic relationships, the ones that can leave us feeling too ashamed and isolated to share our reality with our sisters. A choral testimony, infused with a poet’s image-making and the wisdom of poems, it reminds me of Adrienne Rich’s powerful ‘Translations’ as Suleyman dares to speak her truth – her sisters’ truth – to show us how ‘this way of grief / is shared, unnecessary / and political’

  AMY KEY

• I read the Chain in one sitting and found it shattering, riveting and impossible to put down. It’s beautifully written, thoughtful and so moving. Chimene Suleyman underscores how common these issues are and how absolutely necessary this book is

  BIDISHA MAMATA