American Dervish
A Novel
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4.0 • 177 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced, a stirring and explosive novel about an American Muslim family in Wisconsin struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.
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.
American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poor Hayat Shah: his father drinks and sleeps around; his mother constantly tells him how awful Muslim men are (especially his father, with his "white prostitutes"); he doesn't seem to have any friends; and he's in love with his mother's best friend, the beautiful Mina who's his mother's age and something of an aunt to him. Unlike his parents, Mina, who came to Milwaukee from a bad marriage in Pakistan, is devout, which makes sexual stirrings and the Qur'an go hand in hand for the young Hayat (aside from a framing device, the story mostly takes place when he's between 10 and 12). His rival for Mina's love isn't just a grown man, he's Jewish, so along with the roil of conflicting ideas about gender, sexuality, and Islamic constraint vs. Western looseness, first-time novelist Akhtar also takes on anti-Semitism. Though set well before 9/11, the book is clearly affected by it, with Akhtar determined to traffic in big themes and illustrate the range of Muslim thought and practice. This would be fine if the book didn't so often feel contrived, stocked with caricatures rather than people. Ultimately, Akhtar's debut reads like a melodramatic YA novel, not because of the age of its narrator but because of the abundance of lessons to be learned.
Customer Reviews
Wonderful
Heartwarming and honest. A must read for westerners (like me). This book provides a depth of understanding and compassion for American Moslems.
Thank you Ethan Hawke!
I read an interview with Ethan Hawke in a magazine. The interviewer, who was asking him about his own writing asked him what his favorite books were and this book made his list. So admittedly, I went into this for a flimsy reason but in the end, it paid off, because without the recommendation, I may not have found this treasure. This book is written beautifully and the story brings you in immediately. While I interested and have some knowledge of Islam, you do not need either to enjoy this story. It's a classic coming of age story, of finding yourself apart from your culture and religious upbringing and how some of us never maybe never do so, thus carrying on these traditions, even if we shouldn't. Every character in this story is flawed, such as real life, which makes this story more immediate and real to the reader. And ironically, I think that the strongest person in this story, in terms of finding themselves and breaking from tradition was perhaps the most flawed. Wonderful writing and a realistic story, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, both tragic and triumphant, this had it all.