Ayad Akhtar

American Dervish: A Novel Ayad Akhtar

From Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar, a stirring and explosive debut novel about an American Muslim family in Wisconsin struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.

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.



American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life.