From the novel's opening paragraph-"When my mother was pregnant with me, she had only one craving. That craving was for Coca-Cola"-first-time novelist Alexandra Chreiteh asks us to see, with wonder, humor, and dismay, how inextricably confused are naming and desire, identity and branding. Critics in Lebanon have responded to Chreiteh's frank novel in a storm, calling it "an electric shock" and finding that the problems of its characters reflect grave "social anomalies." Read Chreiteh and see what the storm is all about.