In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and precarious neighborhoods, Coolidge. More about this book >

• HONOREE 5 Under 35 2024 >

  Selected by Laila Lalami >

  Laila Lalami

  

  Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the International Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a Finalist for both the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. Her essays appear in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.