Mina

Mina is the main character in the novel and its first-person narrator. She is a Lebanese American doctor who in the present timeline is visiting the Greek island of Lesbos in order to provide medical care to refugees who are arriving there. She intersperses anecdotes from her life into her narration of events on Lesbos, detailing her fraught relationship with her family and her gradual shift to understanding that she was a transgender woman.

Mina’s relationships to other characters are integral to the plot. She appears to have a strong and stable relationship with her wife Francine, with whom she currently lives in Chicago, and it is Francine who has encouraged her to go to Lesbos. Her brother Mazen, who visits her in Lesbos, is the only member of her family with whom she is still in touch, and since childhood they have had a deep bond...