American Dervish: From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Couverture souple

Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes.

Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. She is independent, beautiful and intelligent, and arrives on the Shah's doorstep when her disastrous marriage in Pakistan disintegrates. Even Hayat's skeptical father can't deny the liveliness and happiness that accompanies Mina into their home. Her deep spirituality brings the family's Muslim faith to life in a way that resonates with Hayat as nothing has before. Studying the Quran by Mina's side and basking in the glow of her attention, he feels an entirely new purpose mingled with a growing infatuation for his teacher.

When Mina meets and begins dating a man, Hayat is confused by his feelings of betrayal. His growing passions, both spiritual and romantic, force him to question all that he has come to believe is true. Just as Mina finds happiness, Hayat is compelled to act -- with devastating consequences for all those he loves most.

American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life. Ayad Akhtar was raised in the Midwest himself, and through Hayat Shah he shows readers vividly the powerful forces at work on young men and women growing up Muslim in America. This is an intimate, personal first novel that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.

A terrific first novel, warm and wise. (Kate Saunders THE TIMES)

this book is prescient and timely in both recognising and dramatically exploring this increasingly unbreachable social divide. (ENTERTAINMENT FOCUS)

his dialogue is free-flowing and natural, and he has a good eye for small visual details within a scene that colour the mood of the action around them. (Alan Morrison THE HERALD)

Both extremists and the ambivalent are accorded even-handed coverage and the characterisation is strong (Catherine Taylor THE GUARDIAN)

American Dervish is an extraordinary novel and one you certainly won't regret reading (Roddy Ashworth SUNDAY EXPRESS)

Akhtar proves the capacity of the great American stories to be endlessly renewed by each generation of writers (Claire Allfree METRO)

There are themes here reminiscent of The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley and Ian McEwan's more recent Atonement, of a life scarred by chame at a childish act that has catastrophic consequences in adult life. (TLS)

American Dervish is about the collision of cultures, identity and religion in 1980s America. (BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH)

a pleasing read (THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST)

Ayad Akhtar's first novel is deftly plotted, with a frame narrative that shows how Hayat's sense of shame pursues him into adulthood. There are shades of Ian McEwan's Atonement, but Akhtar's writing has a crisp, imagistic quality all its own. (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)