The Other Americans

***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST***
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

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; Efra n, 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. 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.

Author: Laila Lalami
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 03/26/2019
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781524747145


Award: Kirkus Prize - Finalist
Award: National Book Awards - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/15/2018 pg. 43
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2019 pg. 21
Booklist 02/01/2019 pg. 26
Publishers Weekly 01/28/2019
BookPage 04/01/2019

About the Author
*** 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ***
*** WINNER OF THE 2019 SIMPSON/JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE ***

LAILA LALAMI is the author of The Other Americans, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits; Secret Son; and The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, and The Guardian. A professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, she lives in Los Angeles.