FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2019

‘A provocative and gripping novel by a gifted writer’ JOHN BOYNE
‘Remarkable, timely … Impeccably written’ ROXANE GAY
‘A deftly constructed account of a crime and its consequences’ J.M. COETZEE
‘A writer of uncommon conviction and tremendous insight’ VIET THANH NGUYEN

There wasn’t anything I could do. All I saw was a man falling to the ground.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters- Guerraoui’s daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she’d left for good; his widow Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efra in, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, a former classmate of Nora’s and now a veteran of the Iraq war; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and Driss himself.

As the characters o deeply divided by race, religion and class o tell their stories in The Other Americans, Driss’s family is forced to confront its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies and love, in all its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.

Laila Lalami is the author of three successful novels including The Moor’s Account, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the American Book Award. She has written for publications including the Guardian and the New York Times, and is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles.
@LailaLalami