The Other Americans - by Laila Lalami (Paperback)

About the Book

"From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Moor's Account--a timely and powerful new novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant that is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, all of it informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. Nora Guerraoui, a jazz composer, returns home to a small town in the Mojave after hearing that her father, owner of a popular restaurant there, has been killed in a suspicious hit-and-run car accident. Told by multiple narrators--Nora herself, Jeremy (the Iraq war veteran with whom she develops an intimacy), widow Maryam, Efrain (an immigrant witness to the accident who refuses to get involved for fear of deportation), Coleman (the police investigator), and Driss (the dead man himself), The Other Americans deftly explores one family's secrets and hypocrisies even as it offers a portrait of Americans riven by race, class, and religion, living side by side, yet ignorant of the vicissitudes that each tribe, as it were, faces" -- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.

Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui--father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant--is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.

As the characters--deeply divided by race, religion, and class--tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss's family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love--messy and unpredictable--is born.

Winner of the Arab American Book Award in Fiction
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction
Finalist for the California Book Award
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize
A Los Angeles Times bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, Variety, and Kirkus Reviews

Review Quotes

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Winner of the Arab American Book Awards Fiction Prize

"[A] page-turning mystery. . . . Lalami may be our finest contemporary chronicler of immigration and its discontents." --The Washington Post

"You're in the hands of a maestra of literary fiction. . . . Riveting. . . . Excellent." --NPR

"Timely and eloquent." --The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning. . . . Incisive. . . . Poignant. . . . Devastating." --The Atlantic

"Revelatory. . . . Lalami is at the height of her powers in this poignant symphony of perspectives about the painful complexity of life as a Muslim American." --Esquire

"A beautiful, compassionate novel from a writer with keen insight into the human condition and a rare gift for crafting perfect prose." --Los Angeles Times

"A powerful novel of intolerance and compassion, resilience and weakness, love and loss." --The Economist

"A complex dialogue on race, identity and politics; this book is a sign of the times we live in today." --Vogue

"Demonstrates brilliantly, in ways foreseen and unforeseen, as often denied as acknowledged, how the personal and political enmesh in all our lives." --The Guardian

"A compelling portrait of race and immigration in America. . . . Lalami is remarkably skilled at rendering the interior lives of her cast." --Time

"Lalami's scrupulous construction lends The Other Americans a page-turning excitement. . . . Her interrogation is rigorous, and her provocations--about love's dangerous power, the ties between resentment and privilege--resonate through to the last page." --Entertainment Weekly

"Impeccably written. . . . I love the depth of character here for Nora and Jeremy. The narrative is good from many points of view but theirs is the heart of this story and what a beautiful beating heart it is." --Roxane Gay

"This deftly constructed account of a crime and its consequences shows up, in its quiet way, the pressures under which ordinary Americans of Muslim background have labored since the events of 9/11." --J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"A writer of uncommon conviction and tremendous insight." --Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

"A combo love story, mystery and literary exploration of immigration in America." --Nicholas Kristof

"Confirms Lalami's reputation as one of the country's most sensitive interrogators, probing at the fault lines in family, and the wider world." --Financial Times

"Splendid. . . . The Other Americans is the kind of book you read breathlessly, savoring each character's turn in the spotlight." --The Seattle Times

"Deft, direct, and absorbing. . . . [An] elegant, scalloping mystery. . . . Haunting." --Newsday

"Laila Lalami's beautiful prose, which unfolds in alternating perspectives, explores immigration, race, religion, and class in a very timely way." --HelloGiggles

About the Author

Laila Lalami is the author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, and The Moor's Account, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and which won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, and The Guardian. In 2019, she was awarded the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize for her body of work. A professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, she lives in Los Angeles. www.lailalalami.com