Author: Patmeena Sabit
Year published: 2026
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 400
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (VA, NY)
Summary: Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Review: I am on a roll with the Book of the Month Club books; they've all been quite good, so I had high hopes for this one, and then it took me quite a while to get into it. But, in the end, it worked for me.
The chapters are super short, ranging from one sentence to three or four pages. Each chapter is told by one of the many people involved in the Sharaf family's life: friends, neighbors, reporters, police, and more. The only people whose story we don't hear is the family itself, which is clever. Each chapter gives us a perspective on the family, the events that took place, and how the family members interact with the community.
At first, hearing from all these different sources about the family and their standing in their Afghan community was a bit slow for me. I couldn't see where it was all going. Then "the incident" happens, and people's accounts start to veer more negative. Like once a bad thing happens, people's opinions change. Eventually, the national community is pulled in (as we are with sensationalized news stories) and the ugly of America comes out through Islamaphobia.
This is a really good story that slowly reveals itself and, in the end, we're still not sure what the "truth" is, just how everyone has been affected by their version of events.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Title)--G
- Immigration (Afghanistan to the USA)
- Literary Escapes--Virginia
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