Hotly Anticipated Second Novel by Hannah Lillith Assadi Out Now

A much anticipated second novel by alumna and Adjunct Associate Professor Hannah Assadi ’13 (CC ’08) is available now from Riverhead Books. 

In The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, an elderly woman confronts a lifetime of secrets and betrayal under the mysterious skies of her island home. Assadi’s haunting and darkly romantic novel pulls readers into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind. 

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells has been named a most anticipated book of the year by The Washington Post, Good Morning America, Bustle, Lit Hub, Hey Alma, and The Millions. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a haunting elegy for loss, desire, and memory.” 

An excerpt can be read here.

Hannah Lillith Assadi received her MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. She also attended Columbia University for her Bachelor's, where she received the Philolexian Prize for her poetry and fiction and graduated summa cum laude. She was raised in Arizona and now lives in Brooklyn. Her first novel Sonora (Soho 2017) received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, Assadi was named a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree.