FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2019
'A provocative and gripping novel by a gifted writer' JOHN BOYNE
'Remarkable, timely ... Impeccably written' ROXANE GAY
'A deftly constructed account of a crime and its consequences' J.M. COETZEE
'A writer of uncommon conviction and tremendous insight' VIET THANH NGUYEN
There wasn't anything I could do. All I saw was a man falling to the ground.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, a former classmate of Nora's and now a veteran of the Iraq war; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and Driss himself.
As the characters - deeply divided by race, religion and class - tell their stories in
The Other Americans, Driss's family is forced to confront its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies and love, in all its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.
A mesmerising novel about family, love and buried grudges from Pulitzer Prize-finalist and Man Booker Prize-longlisted Laila Lalami
One night in late April, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of this event bring together an eclectic cast of characters: a daughter who must return to a town she thought she'd left behind for good; a grieving wife who still pines after her life in the old country; a witness whose personal circumstances prevent him from coming forward; a detective who is just now discovering her son's sexual orientation; a veteran who is wracked with guilt about the Iraq war; a father who is trying to cover up his son's mistakes; and Driss Guerraoui himself.
Narrated in turn by each of these characters, the novel explores the invisible connections that tie Americans together even as they remain deeply divided by visible markers like race, religion, or class. As the mystery of what happened to Driss Guerraoui unfolds, a family's secrets are revealed, a town's hypocrisies are faced, and love, in its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.
Brilliantly imagined
