Amani is hooked on a mystery-a poem on airmail paper that slips out of one of her father's
books. It seems to have been written by her grandmother a refugee who arrived in Jordan during
the First World War. Soon the perfect occasion to investigate arises: her Uncle Hafez an
advisor to the King of Jordan invites her father to celebrate the king's sixtieth birthday-and
to fence with the king as in their youth. Her father has avoided returning to his homeland for
decades but Amani persuades him to come with her. Uncle Hafez will make their time in Jordan
complicated-and dangerous-after Amani discovers a missing relative and is launched into a
journey of loss history and eventually a fight for her own life. Fencing with the King
masterfully draws on King Lear and Arthurian fable to explore the power of inheritance the
trauma of displacement and whether we can release the past to build a future.
