Of The Other Americans’ many tantalizing themes, these loom silently over all others: the roaring shadows of 9/11 still lapping at Muslim Americans like dark water, the dehumanizing trials bearing down on immigrants in the current political climate, and the resonant conviction that the past seldom recedes into the distance, and that acts of violence and brutality are bound to leave ripples behind. Or what the characters claim is the truth. But Lalami effectively uses this structure to deliberately reveal the past in a progressively gripping and suspenseful narrative that coalesces into an unsettling conversation about the truth.

Some sections, admittedly, sing in a more lucid voice than others, some viewpoints are more persuasive than others, their tragedies burrowing deeper. The brief, precise prose chapters blurred past me so swiftly I could not follow. “How long had he lain on the asphalt before his breath ran out?”įrom there, the novel dips like hummingbirds from one first-person narrator to another, but always coming around to the mystery of Driss’s death which assumes various dimensions as it is refracted through the alternating voices of the residents of his small suburb in the Mojave desert. “Had he suffered? Had he called out for help?” The unspoken, hanging words are sharp, wounding. But the more Nora tries, the further her hopes sink, as inexorably as if they are weighted with stones. The pain of it is goading her to seek answers, and it was a tether that held her to the small Mojave Desert town.

The hit-and-run killing of Driss Guerraoui echoed through his daughter’s mind with the vitality of a heartbeat. “Growing up in this town, I had long ago learned that the savagery of a man named Mohammed was rarely questioned, but his humanity always had to be proven.

The other americans book