NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • 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.

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; Efraín, 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. 

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
NORA
 
My father was killed on a spring night four years ago, while I sat in the corner booth of a new bistro in Oakland. Whenever I think about that moment, these two contradictory images come to me: my father strug­gling for breath on the cracked asphalt, and me drinking champagne with my roommate, Margo. We were celebrating because Margo had received a grant from the Jerome Foundation to work on a new cham­ber piece, her second big commission that year. We’d ordered steamed mussels and shared an entrée and lingered late into the night. The waiter was trying to convince us to get the chocolate mousse for dessert when my phone rang.
 
I have no clear memory of what happened next. I must have told Margo the news. We must have paid the bill, put on our coats, walked the five blocks back to our apartment. A bag was packed, somehow. But I do remember driving home on the 5 freeway, in the foggy dark­ness that cloaked almond groves and orange orchards, all the while dreaming up alternate explanations: perhaps the sheriff’s department had misidentified the body, or the hospital had swapped my father’s records with someone else’s. These possibilities were far-fetched, I knew, and yet I clung to them as I drove. Under my headlights, I could see only twenty feet ahead. But the fog lifted at dawn, and by the time I reached the Mojave, the sun was out and the sky a brazen blue.
 
All I could hear when I stepped into my parents’ house were my heels on the travertine floor. There was a copy of Reader’s Digest on the console, a set of keys on a yellow wrist coil, and a pair of sunglasses with a missing lens. One of the framed photos on the hallway wall was askew. In the living room, my mother sat on the sofa, staring at the cordless phone in her hand as though she couldn’t remember how to use it. “Mom,” I called, but she didn’t look up. It was as if she couldn’t hear me. She was still in the white shirt and black gi from her karate class the night before. Across the ottoman, the jacket of her uniform lay in a heap, the dragon appliquéd on its back a startling red.
 
It seemed to me then that my father was still with us—in the half-empty packet of Marlboros on the windowsill, the frayed slippers under the coffee table, the tooth marks on the pencil that stuck out from the book of crossword puzzles. Any moment now, he would walk in, smelling of coffee and hamburgers, saying, You won’t believe what a customer told me this morning, and then, seeing me standing by the armchair, call out, Nora! When did you get here? His eyes would gleam with delight, he would kiss me on the cheeks, the stubble on his chin would tickle me, and I would say, Now. I just got here now.
 
But the doorway remained empty, and pain kicked me in the stom­ach. “I don’t understand,” I said, though what I meant was that I didn’t believe. Disbelief had been the only constant since I’d heard the news. “I just talked to him yesterday.”
 
My mother stirred, finally. She turned to me, and I saw that her eyes were rimmed with red and her lips cracked. “You talked to him?” she said, not without surprise. “What did he say?”
 
From the hallway came the rattle of the mailbox slot and the thump of the mail as it hit the floor. In its wicker basket, the cat raised its head, then went back to sleep.
 
“What did he say?” she asked again.
 
“Nothing. He said he wanted to chat with me for a bit, but I had to go teach and I wanted to get a cup of coffee in the few minutes I had left on my break. I told him I’d call him back later.” My hand flew to my mouth. I could have talked to him one more time, heard the care in his voice, and yet I had squandered the chance. And all for some bitter coffee in a paper cup, hastily consumed before confronting a class of bored prep-school kids making their way through The Odyssey.
 
A motorcycle roared up the street and the windows shuddered. Nervously I undid the folding clasp on my watch and clicked it back in place. Then a grim silence fell on the room again. “What was Dad doing at the restaurant so late?” I asked. “Doesn’t Marty usually close up?”
 
“He wanted to install new lights he bought, so he told Marty to go home.”
 
And then what? He must have locked up the restaurant and walked out. Maybe he was jiggling his keys in his hands, the way he always did when he was lost in thought, or maybe he was distracted by a text on his cell phone. Either way, he didn’t hear or see the car barreling down on him until it was too late. Had he suffered? Had he called out for help? How long had he lain on the asphalt before his breath ran out? Unbidden, a memory came to me of a summer party at the neighbors’ house when I was four years old. They’d recently remodeled their backyard, and were showing off their new barbecue pit and seating nook to my parents. My sister ditched me; she was ten and wanted to play with the older kids. I started chasing after a pair of dragonflies, but just as my fingers closed around one of them, I fell into the pool. The water was icy and tasted like almonds. It drew me to the bottom with such force that I felt I would never draw another breath again. I was in the pool for only an instant before my father dove in after me, but in that instant my limbs froze, my chest burned, my heart nearly stopped. That pain came back to me now. “Something doesn’t seem right,” I said after a moment. “The one time Dad stays for close, he gets run over and killed?”
 
I realized too late that I had said the wrong thing, or used the wrong word. My mother began to weep. Loud, unguarded sobs that made her face flush and her shoulders heave. I crossed the living room, moved the rolled-up prayer mat out of the way, and sat beside her, holding her so close that I could feel her tremors. Everything about this moment felt strange to me—being in this house on a weekday in spring, wearing my shoes indoors, even comforting my mother as she cried. In my family, my father was the consoler. It was to him I came first whenever something bad happened to me, whether it was scrap­ing my knee on the monkey bars when I was eight, or losing another composer competition just a month earlier.
 
My mother wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue. “I knew some­thing was wrong when I came back from your sister’s house. I went there to drop off karate patches for the children, and she asked me to stay for dinner. Then I came home, and he wasn’t here.”
 
Yet the armchair where my father usually sat still bore the imprint of his body. It was as if he were only in the next room.
 
“What did the police say?” I asked. “Do they have a lead?”
 
“No. The detective just asked a lot of questions. Did he have money troubles, did he use drugs, did he gamble, did he have enemies. Like that. I said no.”
 
I remember being puzzled by these questions, which were so dif­ferent from those that swirled around in my head: who was driving the car and how did they hit him and why did they flee the scene? Then my gaze was drawn to the window. Outside, two blackbirds landed one after the other on the electric wire. The neighbor across the street was deflating the giant Easter bunny that had sat for weeks in his front yard, gathering dust. It stared back with grotesque eyes as its white ears collapsed under his shoes. The wind whipped the flag on the pole, and the sun beat down without mercy.
  • WINNER | 2019
    Simpson Family Literary Prize
  • LONGLIST | 2020
    Aspen Words Literary Prize
  • FINALIST | 2019
    National Book Awards
***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST***

One of Time Magazine's Best Fiction of 2019

Named a Most Anticipated Book for 2019: Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, New York Magazine/Vulture, The Millions, Bustle, Electric Literature, Nylon, HuffPost, BookPage, The BBC, and Buzzfeed

"Powerful . . . Fascinating . . . Heartbreaking . . . It matters desperately . . . The novel opens into a collective confessional . . . At the core of The Other Americans is a deep anxiety: What if the truth is contradictory or so obfuscated that we lose the will to pursue it? For the reader, the novel presents something of a Rorschach test. Will our belief and sympathy depend on the speaker’s racial or gender identity, or perhaps his or her age?"
The New York Times Book Review

"'Other Americans take center stage in a timely new novel . . . You feel like the promise of America can still come through after all."
—Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan


"Lalami gives us a searching exploration of the lives of several individuals with whom mainstream American society has a vexed relationship."
The Washington Post

"A compelling portrait of race and immigration in America . . . Lalami is remarkably skilled at rendering the interior lives of her cast."
Time

"The Other Americans confirms Lalami’s reputation as one of the country’s most sensitive interrogators, probing at the fault lines in family, and the wider world."
Financial Times

"What a monumental challenge it is to reveal the state of America, to assert what unites and divides us—and what remarkable insight Lalami demonstrates by doing just that. Her interrogation is rigorous, and her provocations—about love’s dangerous power, the ties between resentment and privilege—resonate through to the last page."
Entertainment Weekly

"A powerful novel of intolerance and compassion, resilience and weakness, love and loss, populated by flawed but sympathetic characters whose lives are rocked by actions and emotions beyond their control."
The Economist

"Pulitzer Prize finalist Lalami (The Moor’s Account) may be our finest contemporary chronicler of immigration and its discontents. Her new novel spares no one, and it’s the kind of page-turning mystery you crave for a rainy reading weekend. The book uses different perspectives to uncover the real story behind a Moroccan immigrant’s death in a California intersection."
The Washington Post

"From its first sentence, The Other Americans grabs the reader with its directness and urgency."
Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Splendid . . . At once mystery novel, character study and poignant reflection on the immigrant experience, The Other Americans is the kind of book you read breathlessly, savoring each character’s turn in the spotlight even as you miss the others. Together their voices create a vivid portrait of a time and place in America; a town of simmering resentments, wary tension, unexpected connections and uncanny beauty.”
—The Seattle Times

"Laila Lalami describes all her characters brilliantly—literally so: They spring from the page. Readers can see many of them vividly, and empathize with the problems that shape their behavior, even while sometimes feeling irritation . . . The construction of this novel is deft. As the author moves among the characters’ tales, she engages different parts of our minds and hearts. Our feelings and ideas are enlarged. At the end, the Americans in these pages are no more “other” than anyone else in this nation of immigrants. The novel has done its job because of Laila Lalami’s extraordinary descriptions of personal dynamics and her evocations of place, especially the desert."
The Washington Times

“Remarkable, timely novel. Impeccably written story about a hit and run, a family that must grapple with their grief as they try to make sense of why they’ve lost Driss, the patriarch, and the slowly unraveling mystery of who is responsible for the unthinkable. I love the depth of character here for Nora and Jeremy. The narrative is good from many points of view but theirs is the heart of this story and what a beautiful beating heart it is.” 
—Roxane Gay

“It’s a combo love story, mystery and literary exploration of immigration in America.”
—Nicholas Kristof

“This deftly constructed account of a crime and its consequences shows up, in its quiet way, the pressures under which ordinary Americans of Muslim background have labored since the events of 9/11.”
—J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
 
“A writer of uncommon conviction and tremendous insight.” 
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer

"Lalami’s crisp, straightforward prose offers the perfect counterpoint to the complexity of her plot, which artfully interweaves past and present. Reminiscent of Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth in its depiction of the enduring effects of family secrets and betrayals, The Other Americans also addresses a multitude of other issues—immigration, prejudice, post-traumatic stress, love and murder—with what can only be described as magical finesse."
Bookpage (starred review)

"Powerful . . . In a narrative that succeeds as mystery and love story, family and character study, Lalami captures the complex ways humans can be strangers not just outside their “tribes” but within them, as well as to themselves."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lalami impressively conducts this chorus of flawed yet graceful human beings to mellifluous effect . . . An eloquent reminder that frame of reference is everything when defining the 'other.'"
Booklist (starred review)

"Lalami is in thrilling command of her narrative gifts, reminding readers why The Moor's Account was a Pulitzer finalist . . . Nuanced characters drive this novel . . . Lalami expertly mines an American penchant for rendering the 'other.'"
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
© Jesse Dittmar
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington PostThe NationHarper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

www.lailalalami.com View titles by Laila Lalami

About

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • 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.

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; Efraín, 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. 

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

Excerpt

NORA
 
My father was killed on a spring night four years ago, while I sat in the corner booth of a new bistro in Oakland. Whenever I think about that moment, these two contradictory images come to me: my father strug­gling for breath on the cracked asphalt, and me drinking champagne with my roommate, Margo. We were celebrating because Margo had received a grant from the Jerome Foundation to work on a new cham­ber piece, her second big commission that year. We’d ordered steamed mussels and shared an entrée and lingered late into the night. The waiter was trying to convince us to get the chocolate mousse for dessert when my phone rang.
 
I have no clear memory of what happened next. I must have told Margo the news. We must have paid the bill, put on our coats, walked the five blocks back to our apartment. A bag was packed, somehow. But I do remember driving home on the 5 freeway, in the foggy dark­ness that cloaked almond groves and orange orchards, all the while dreaming up alternate explanations: perhaps the sheriff’s department had misidentified the body, or the hospital had swapped my father’s records with someone else’s. These possibilities were far-fetched, I knew, and yet I clung to them as I drove. Under my headlights, I could see only twenty feet ahead. But the fog lifted at dawn, and by the time I reached the Mojave, the sun was out and the sky a brazen blue.
 
All I could hear when I stepped into my parents’ house were my heels on the travertine floor. There was a copy of Reader’s Digest on the console, a set of keys on a yellow wrist coil, and a pair of sunglasses with a missing lens. One of the framed photos on the hallway wall was askew. In the living room, my mother sat on the sofa, staring at the cordless phone in her hand as though she couldn’t remember how to use it. “Mom,” I called, but she didn’t look up. It was as if she couldn’t hear me. She was still in the white shirt and black gi from her karate class the night before. Across the ottoman, the jacket of her uniform lay in a heap, the dragon appliquéd on its back a startling red.
 
It seemed to me then that my father was still with us—in the half-empty packet of Marlboros on the windowsill, the frayed slippers under the coffee table, the tooth marks on the pencil that stuck out from the book of crossword puzzles. Any moment now, he would walk in, smelling of coffee and hamburgers, saying, You won’t believe what a customer told me this morning, and then, seeing me standing by the armchair, call out, Nora! When did you get here? His eyes would gleam with delight, he would kiss me on the cheeks, the stubble on his chin would tickle me, and I would say, Now. I just got here now.
 
But the doorway remained empty, and pain kicked me in the stom­ach. “I don’t understand,” I said, though what I meant was that I didn’t believe. Disbelief had been the only constant since I’d heard the news. “I just talked to him yesterday.”
 
My mother stirred, finally. She turned to me, and I saw that her eyes were rimmed with red and her lips cracked. “You talked to him?” she said, not without surprise. “What did he say?”
 
From the hallway came the rattle of the mailbox slot and the thump of the mail as it hit the floor. In its wicker basket, the cat raised its head, then went back to sleep.
 
“What did he say?” she asked again.
 
“Nothing. He said he wanted to chat with me for a bit, but I had to go teach and I wanted to get a cup of coffee in the few minutes I had left on my break. I told him I’d call him back later.” My hand flew to my mouth. I could have talked to him one more time, heard the care in his voice, and yet I had squandered the chance. And all for some bitter coffee in a paper cup, hastily consumed before confronting a class of bored prep-school kids making their way through The Odyssey.
 
A motorcycle roared up the street and the windows shuddered. Nervously I undid the folding clasp on my watch and clicked it back in place. Then a grim silence fell on the room again. “What was Dad doing at the restaurant so late?” I asked. “Doesn’t Marty usually close up?”
 
“He wanted to install new lights he bought, so he told Marty to go home.”
 
And then what? He must have locked up the restaurant and walked out. Maybe he was jiggling his keys in his hands, the way he always did when he was lost in thought, or maybe he was distracted by a text on his cell phone. Either way, he didn’t hear or see the car barreling down on him until it was too late. Had he suffered? Had he called out for help? How long had he lain on the asphalt before his breath ran out? Unbidden, a memory came to me of a summer party at the neighbors’ house when I was four years old. They’d recently remodeled their backyard, and were showing off their new barbecue pit and seating nook to my parents. My sister ditched me; she was ten and wanted to play with the older kids. I started chasing after a pair of dragonflies, but just as my fingers closed around one of them, I fell into the pool. The water was icy and tasted like almonds. It drew me to the bottom with such force that I felt I would never draw another breath again. I was in the pool for only an instant before my father dove in after me, but in that instant my limbs froze, my chest burned, my heart nearly stopped. That pain came back to me now. “Something doesn’t seem right,” I said after a moment. “The one time Dad stays for close, he gets run over and killed?”
 
I realized too late that I had said the wrong thing, or used the wrong word. My mother began to weep. Loud, unguarded sobs that made her face flush and her shoulders heave. I crossed the living room, moved the rolled-up prayer mat out of the way, and sat beside her, holding her so close that I could feel her tremors. Everything about this moment felt strange to me—being in this house on a weekday in spring, wearing my shoes indoors, even comforting my mother as she cried. In my family, my father was the consoler. It was to him I came first whenever something bad happened to me, whether it was scrap­ing my knee on the monkey bars when I was eight, or losing another composer competition just a month earlier.
 
My mother wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue. “I knew some­thing was wrong when I came back from your sister’s house. I went there to drop off karate patches for the children, and she asked me to stay for dinner. Then I came home, and he wasn’t here.”
 
Yet the armchair where my father usually sat still bore the imprint of his body. It was as if he were only in the next room.
 
“What did the police say?” I asked. “Do they have a lead?”
 
“No. The detective just asked a lot of questions. Did he have money troubles, did he use drugs, did he gamble, did he have enemies. Like that. I said no.”
 
I remember being puzzled by these questions, which were so dif­ferent from those that swirled around in my head: who was driving the car and how did they hit him and why did they flee the scene? Then my gaze was drawn to the window. Outside, two blackbirds landed one after the other on the electric wire. The neighbor across the street was deflating the giant Easter bunny that had sat for weeks in his front yard, gathering dust. It stared back with grotesque eyes as its white ears collapsed under his shoes. The wind whipped the flag on the pole, and the sun beat down without mercy.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2019
    Simpson Family Literary Prize
  • LONGLIST | 2020
    Aspen Words Literary Prize
  • FINALIST | 2019
    National Book Awards

Praise

***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST***

One of Time Magazine's Best Fiction of 2019

Named a Most Anticipated Book for 2019: Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, New York Magazine/Vulture, The Millions, Bustle, Electric Literature, Nylon, HuffPost, BookPage, The BBC, and Buzzfeed

"Powerful . . . Fascinating . . . Heartbreaking . . . It matters desperately . . . The novel opens into a collective confessional . . . At the core of The Other Americans is a deep anxiety: What if the truth is contradictory or so obfuscated that we lose the will to pursue it? For the reader, the novel presents something of a Rorschach test. Will our belief and sympathy depend on the speaker’s racial or gender identity, or perhaps his or her age?"
The New York Times Book Review

"'Other Americans take center stage in a timely new novel . . . You feel like the promise of America can still come through after all."
—Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan


"Lalami gives us a searching exploration of the lives of several individuals with whom mainstream American society has a vexed relationship."
The Washington Post

"A compelling portrait of race and immigration in America . . . Lalami is remarkably skilled at rendering the interior lives of her cast."
Time

"The Other Americans confirms Lalami’s reputation as one of the country’s most sensitive interrogators, probing at the fault lines in family, and the wider world."
Financial Times

"What a monumental challenge it is to reveal the state of America, to assert what unites and divides us—and what remarkable insight Lalami demonstrates by doing just that. Her interrogation is rigorous, and her provocations—about love’s dangerous power, the ties between resentment and privilege—resonate through to the last page."
Entertainment Weekly

"A powerful novel of intolerance and compassion, resilience and weakness, love and loss, populated by flawed but sympathetic characters whose lives are rocked by actions and emotions beyond their control."
The Economist

"Pulitzer Prize finalist Lalami (The Moor’s Account) may be our finest contemporary chronicler of immigration and its discontents. Her new novel spares no one, and it’s the kind of page-turning mystery you crave for a rainy reading weekend. The book uses different perspectives to uncover the real story behind a Moroccan immigrant’s death in a California intersection."
The Washington Post

"From its first sentence, The Other Americans grabs the reader with its directness and urgency."
Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Splendid . . . At once mystery novel, character study and poignant reflection on the immigrant experience, The Other Americans is the kind of book you read breathlessly, savoring each character’s turn in the spotlight even as you miss the others. Together their voices create a vivid portrait of a time and place in America; a town of simmering resentments, wary tension, unexpected connections and uncanny beauty.”
—The Seattle Times

"Laila Lalami describes all her characters brilliantly—literally so: They spring from the page. Readers can see many of them vividly, and empathize with the problems that shape their behavior, even while sometimes feeling irritation . . . The construction of this novel is deft. As the author moves among the characters’ tales, she engages different parts of our minds and hearts. Our feelings and ideas are enlarged. At the end, the Americans in these pages are no more “other” than anyone else in this nation of immigrants. The novel has done its job because of Laila Lalami’s extraordinary descriptions of personal dynamics and her evocations of place, especially the desert."
The Washington Times

“Remarkable, timely novel. Impeccably written story about a hit and run, a family that must grapple with their grief as they try to make sense of why they’ve lost Driss, the patriarch, and the slowly unraveling mystery of who is responsible for the unthinkable. I love the depth of character here for Nora and Jeremy. The narrative is good from many points of view but theirs is the heart of this story and what a beautiful beating heart it is.” 
—Roxane Gay

“It’s a combo love story, mystery and literary exploration of immigration in America.”
—Nicholas Kristof

“This deftly constructed account of a crime and its consequences shows up, in its quiet way, the pressures under which ordinary Americans of Muslim background have labored since the events of 9/11.”
—J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
 
“A writer of uncommon conviction and tremendous insight.” 
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer

"Lalami’s crisp, straightforward prose offers the perfect counterpoint to the complexity of her plot, which artfully interweaves past and present. Reminiscent of Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth in its depiction of the enduring effects of family secrets and betrayals, The Other Americans also addresses a multitude of other issues—immigration, prejudice, post-traumatic stress, love and murder—with what can only be described as magical finesse."
Bookpage (starred review)

"Powerful . . . In a narrative that succeeds as mystery and love story, family and character study, Lalami captures the complex ways humans can be strangers not just outside their “tribes” but within them, as well as to themselves."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lalami impressively conducts this chorus of flawed yet graceful human beings to mellifluous effect . . . An eloquent reminder that frame of reference is everything when defining the 'other.'"
Booklist (starred review)

"Lalami is in thrilling command of her narrative gifts, reminding readers why The Moor's Account was a Pulitzer finalist . . . Nuanced characters drive this novel . . . Lalami expertly mines an American penchant for rendering the 'other.'"
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Author

© Jesse Dittmar
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington PostThe NationHarper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

www.lailalalami.com View titles by Laila Lalami

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