While the characters of Laila Lalami’s newest novel confront and sometimes overcome the discomfort caused by their differences, Lalami presents one final troubling question for her readers: what markers of violence have our willingly blind eyes allowed to fester?
Three debut novels shed light on migration from the Middle East and North Africa, taking up themes of displacement, longing for home, and the split narratives of a life “before” and “after.”
Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation is getting a lot of attention. This retelling of Camus’ classic The Stranger imagines the eyes that stare down Meursault’s gun. The unnamed Arab from the original is given a name, Musa, and a brother, Harun, who tells the family’s story in a bar.