Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”-deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Impulsively, Youssef agrees to execute Benaboud.Īn absorbing tale that, alas, ends too abruptly.įour men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions-as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer-and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. In a far-fetched development, Hatim convinces Youssef, who up to now has been impervious to the Party’s propaganda, to see his domestic dilemma as directly linked to the persecution of Muslims. But when Amrani leaves for Los Angeles to reconcile with his estranged daughter Amal, Youssef is summarily ejected from both job and apartment. Amrani, hoping to groom him for the family business, gets Youssef a high-paying job. Amrani sets Youssef up in a luxurious apartment, where he enjoys the Mercedes-and-Marlboro lifestyle. Youssef confronts Amrani, who is thrilled to learn he has a son. Also featured in the magazine is a tycoon named Nabil Amrani, who resembles Youssef, right down to the piercing blue eyes. Hatim, the Party’s chairman, shows Youssef a magazine demonstrating the degenerate journalism (a piece on Morrocan vintners) of a reporter named Benaboud. His only friends are Amin, a law student, and Maati, who works for an Islamic extremist group, the Party, which operates a cafe to attract local youth.

At university, Youssef envies the conspicuous consumption of “Mercedes-and-Marlboro” students. Under questioning by Youssef, she admits that his father was Nabil Amrani, scion of a wealthy family, who died in a car crash shortly before their planned marriage and Youssef’s birth. His father, Rachida claims, died in Youssef’s infancy. Her teen protagonist, Youssef, has begun university studies on scholarship, fulfilling the dreams of his mother, Rachida, a nurse, who raised him single-handedly in a one-room shanty.

In her debut novel, Lalami, author of the short-story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, 2005), explores the religious and political underpinnings of social inequity in globalized Morocco. A slum-dweller in Casablanca is briefly elevated into the upper class, then recruited by Islamic terrorists.

Secret son by laila lalami