NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE SELECTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAROYAN PRIZE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, SUMMER READING LIST

TOP SPRING INDIES FICTION SELECTION, LIBRARY JOURNAL

Ali Eteraz’s much-anticipated debut novel is the story of M., a supportive husband, adventureless dandy, lapsed believer, and second-generation immigrant who wants nothing more than to host parties and bring children into the world as full-fledged Americans. As M.’s life gradually fragments around him—a wife with a chronic illness; a best friend stricken with grief; a boss jeopardizing a respectable career—M. spins out into the pulsating underbelly of Philadelphia, where he encounters others grappling with fallout from the War on Terror. Among the pornographers and converts to Islam, rappers and wrestlers, M. confronts his existential degradation and the life of a second-class citizen. Darkly comic, provocative, and insightful, Native Believer is a startling vision of the contemporary American experience and the human capacity to shape identity and belonging at all costs.

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“Eteraz’s publisher has taken an admirable risk with “Native Believer.” I found myself wondering — as I sped through its pages with alternating interest, awe and queasiness — whether Eteraz had set out purposefully to challenge his imagined readership, to engage in a kind of “noble protest” against the demands of literary commerce. I believe this novel will offend as many readers as it captivates. It is unflinching in its willingness to transgress taboos, whether those taboos are religious, sexual or both. And in the end, “Native Believer” stands as an important contribution to American literary culture: a book quite unlike any I’ve read in recent memory, which uses its characters to explore questions vital to our continuing national discourse around Islam. This is a novel that says (to borrow a line from Aimé Césaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism”), “Any civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.”

—New York Times Book Review | Editors Choice Announcement.

“M.’s life spins out of control after his boss discovers a Qur'an in M.’s house during a party, in this wickedly funny Philadelphia picaresque about a secular Muslim’s identity crisis in a country waging a never-ending war on terror.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine, Summer Reading List, 2016

“This is a brilliant, unapologetic book…It’s also the perfect book for our times. In a just world it would be awarded a place alongside other great civil rights books. However, it will probably just end up being banned and scorned by the self-righteous and the blind; the ones who need to read and understand it the most.”

—Qantara.de

“Eteraz’s narrative is witty and unpredictable…and the darkly comic ending is pleasingly macabre. As for M., in this identity-obsessed dandy, Eteraz has created a perfect protagonist for the times. A provocative and very funny exploration of Muslim identity in America today.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“In bitingly funny prose, first novelist Eteraz (known for his memoir, Children of Dust) sums up the pain and contradictions of an American not wanting to be categorized; the ending is a bang-up surprise.”

—Library Journal, Top Spring Indies Fiction Selection

“[In] this poignant and profoundly funny first novel…Eteraz combines masterful storytelling with intelligent commentary to create a nuanced work of social and political art.”

—Booklist

“In reviewing books I am often drawn to wonder why a publisher selected this or that author for publication. In too many cases, the question is unanswerable. In the case of Native Believer, it is crystal clear. Ali Eteraz is a master storyteller. Native Believer brings out the angst of a population caught between world events and assimilation into a fear-ridden culture. It is to Eteraz’s credit that he is unapologetic, and nods in admiration to those immigrants who have come before. Believer or non-believer, you won’t look at the local mosque the same after reading this excellent work.”

—Internet Review of Books

“Set in Philadelphia, M is Muslim by birth only, a second-generation immigrant, but when his boss fires him after discovering a copy of the Quran in his home, M must try to find his place in a country set against him in the War on Terror. A highly provocative and completely unmissable debut.”

—amreading.com

“Ali Eteraz’ Native Believer, a new and very funny, wacky and also sometimes painful novel about a contemporary secular Muslim-American guy who gets discriminated against on the job and then goes off the radar and into a kind of Islamic anarchic underground alternative scene in Philadelphia. It’s really brilliant and very charming. I was laughing really hard on the train reading it and people were looking at me funny.”

—Bookculture.com

“Eteraz is a brave writer whose narrative immerses you in a world of fear, doubt, identity crises, and paranoia. He exposes the mind of the American citizen separated from the norm because of who he is, was, or could be. Native Believer is a relevant book and should be read for its fine prose.”

—JaggeryLit

“Like these five novelists, Ali Eteraz, author of the debut novel Native Believer, is an immigrant; he came from the Dominican Republic and Pakistan to New York, where he yearned to “produce stories that would be deemed quintessentially American.” As an adult he read Richard Wright on American disenfranchisement, and then found his own way to write a sad, funny, and haunting novel that debates what America is. The novel captures post-9/11 U.S. in a brilliant satire.”

—RainTaxi

“There are parallels between Mohsin Hamid’s dark narrative, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), and Ali Eteraz’s equally troubling novel, Native Believer.”

—Counterpunch

“Knife-sharp and ruthlessly funny, Native Believer is the American novel of now. Right now. Eteraz’s writing is exciting, beautiful, and jam-packed with intelligent surprise. I saw myself among its infidels and dreamers, its pornographers and heathens, its believers, the lovers, and the lost. I could not put it down.”

—Scott Cheshire, author of High as the Horses’ Bridles

“Ali Eteraz has written a hurricane of a novel. It blows open the secrets and longings of Muslim immigration to the West, sweeping us up in the drama of identity in ways newly raw. This is no poised and prettified tale; buckle in for a uproariously messy and revealing ride.”

—Lorraine Adams, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of The Room and the Chair

“Merciless, intellectually lacerating, and brutally funny, Native Believer is not merely a Gonzo panorama of Muslim America—it’s one of the most incisive novels I’ve ever read on America itself. Eteraz paints our empire with the same erotic longing and black, depraved wit that Nabokov used sixty years ago in Lolita. But whereas Nabokov’s work was set in the heyday of America’s cheerful upswing, Eteraz sets the country in the new, fractious world order. Here, sex, money, and violence all stake their claims on treacherously shifting identities—and neither love nor god is an escape.”

—Molly Crabapple, contributing editor VICE, author of Drawing Blood

“Ali Eteraz has written a novel, both heartbreaking and exultant, about how it feels to get scalded by the great melting pot. He is a writer of tremendous nuance, sensitivity, and insight. An enormous triumph in its own right, Native Believer also points toward an even brighter future for American fiction.”

—Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell’s House

Prior Praise for Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz:

“A gifted writer and scholar, Eteraz is able to create a true-life Islamic bildungsroman as he effortlessly conveys his coming-of-age tale while educating the reader … His catharsis transcends the page.” 

—Publishers Weekly

“The gripping story of a young man exposed to both the beauty and ugliness of religion.” 

—Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account

“An astoundingly frightening, funny, and brave book. At a time when debate and reform in the larger landscape of the Muslim world, and in countries like Pakistan in particular, are virtually non-existent, Children of Dust is a call to thought.” 

—Fatima Bhutto, author of The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

Available for purchase via:

Amazon
B&N
Indiebound

Akashic Books has an ongoing list of all upcoming events for Ali Eteraz.

Previous & Upcoming

Apr 10, 2016
2:30 pm, Conversation 2094
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, USC 
Los Angeles, CA

Official Book Launch
May 3, 2016
7 pm
City Lights
San Francisco, CA
Facebook Invite
5 Questions with City Lights

InsideStoryTime
Octopus Literary Salon
May 19, 2016
7 - 9 pm
2101 Webster Street
Oakland CA

Jun 4, 2016
Babylon Salon Reading Series
6 pm
SF, CA
Facebook Invite

Jun 5, 2016
11:45 am
The New Globalism, with Yaa Gyasi, Sunil Yapa, Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Bay Area Book Festival
Berkeley, CA

Sep 15, 2016
Twelve Gates Arts
6:30 pm
Philadelphia, PA

Sep 18, 2016
Brooklyn Book Festival
Time TBD
Brooklyn, NY

Sep 22, 2016
5 - 7 pm
UC Berkeley
Stephens Hall 10
Institute for South Asia Studies
UC Berkeley Events

Oct 14, 2016
LitQuake, East Bay
Lit by the Lake
Oakland Main Library
6:30 PM
Oakland CA

Nov 19-20
Miami Book Festival
Time TBD
Miami, FL

More national dates forthcoming. Check back soon.