Author: Ayad Akhtar
Year published: 2012
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 384 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (WI)
Summary: Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes.
Review: I meant to read this book when it first came out, but never got around to it. My in-person book group chose it for this month, which made me happy that I'd finally read this one. I read it on my trip to the east coast and it made the flight from LA to Boston go quickly.
This ended up not being the book I thought it would be. It is really a coming-of-age story about a Muslim boy finding his faith, discovering lust (and perhaps young love?), realizing his family is messed up (as all families are), and figuring out who he is.
When we're young (and sometimes when we're old), we do rash things that affect those around us. Hayat finds this out, and the consequences are huge and long-lasting. What an important life lesson that things are not black and white or simple.
I think this novel does a good job of showing Americans what it can be like to be a Muslim American, that there are different versions of it spanning the spectrum from nonbelievers to the more devout.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Diversity--the main character is Pakistani
- Literary Escapes--Wisconsin
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