Native Believer

Description

“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, 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 fifty-six 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, 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”
“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”
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”
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 world 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, punks, 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.