
The Other Americans
A Novel
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By:
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Laila Lalami
About this listen
Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction
Winner of the Arab American Book Award in Fiction
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, the Washington Post, BookPage, NPR, the Guardian, Variety, New York Public Library, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and Kirkus Reviews.
From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Moor’s Account, here is a timely and powerful novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant—at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant living 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; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraq War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, messy and unpredictable, is born.
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Critic reviews
***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST***
One of Time Magazine's Best Fiction of 2019
Named a Most Anticipated Book for 2019: Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, New York Magazine/Vulture, The Millions, Bustle, Electric Literature, Nylon, HuffPost, BookPage, The BBC, and Buzzfeed
"Powerful . . . Fascinating . . . Heartbreaking . . . It matters desperately . . . The novel opens into a collective confessional . . . At the core of The Other Americans is a deep anxiety: What if the truth is contradictory or so obfuscated that we lose the will to pursue it? For the reader, the novel presents something of a Rorschach test. Will our belief and sympathy depend on the speaker’s racial or gender identity, or perhaps his or her age?" —The New York Times Book Review
"'Other Americans take center stage in a timely new novel . . . You feel like the promise of America can still come through after all."—Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan
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Secret Son
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that 19-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape - until, one day, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive and whisks him from the slums into the luxurious life of Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the poverty of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly unglittering reality...
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Intimate story of identity and family
- By Steve on 02-03-23
By: Laila Lalami
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Unquiet Dead
- A Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak Novel
- By: Ausma Khan
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Detective Esa Khattak is in the midst of his evening prayers when he receives a phone call asking that he and his partner Detective Rachel Getty look into the death of a local man who has fallen off a cliff. At first Christopher Drayton's death - which looks like an accident - doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, especially not from Khattak and Rachel's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases.
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Keeps alive a memory the west may prefer to forget
- By Jim on 02-03-15
By: Ausma Khan
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Zarifa
- A Woman's Battle in a Man's World
- By: Zarifa Ghafari, Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Zarifa Ghafari was three years old when the Taliban banned girls from schools, and she began her education in secret. She was seven when American airstrikes began. She was twenty-six when she became mayor—the only female mayor in the country—of Maidan Wardak, Kabul. An extremist mob barred her from her office; her male staff walked out in protest; assassins tried to kill her six times. Finally, they killed their father. Ghafari stood her ground. She ended corruption in the province, promoted peace and tried to lift up women, despite constant fear for herself and her family.
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A must read do all women worldwide
- By Eva on 04-11-23
By: Zarifa Ghafari, and others
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A Woman Is No Man
- A Novel
- By: Etaf Rum
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, Susan Nezami
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this powerful debut - a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.
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Powerful and Terrifying
- By Emmst51 on 05-04-19
By: Etaf Rum
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Alif the Unseen
- By: G. Willow Wilson
- Narrated by: Sanjiv Jhaveri
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients — dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups — from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif — the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind.
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21st Century Arabian Nights
- By Ryan on 05-28-14
By: G. Willow Wilson
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My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
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Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
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Our Share of Night
- A Novel
- By: Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 27 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
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This Story Grew on Me
- By Nikki on 02-17-23
By: Mariana Enriquez, and others
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The Night Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Yangsze Choo
- Narrated by: Yangsze Choo
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dance hall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.
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very satisfying
- By Ian Macdonald on 03-19-19
By: Yangsze Choo
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What Happened to the Bennetts
- By: Lisa Scottoline
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Jason Bennett is a suburban dad who owns a court-reporting business, but one night, his life takes a horrific turn. He is driving his family home after his daughter’s field hockey game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them, on a dark stretch of road. Suddenly two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. A horrific flash of violence changes his life forever.
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Oh my gosh! You have outdone yourself! 💚🍀
- By Kindle Customer on 03-30-22
By: Lisa Scottoline
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The World She Edited
- Katharine S. White at The New Yorker
- By: Amy Reading
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent.
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A deep dive into a literary life
- By AMC on 10-27-24
By: Amy Reading
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Good Girl
- A Novel
- By: Aria Aber
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist. Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of freedom.
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Rebel, Rebel
- By Suzanna on 02-17-25
By: Aria Aber
What listeners say about The Other Americans
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- Courtney Taylor
- 11-24-20
Everyone is getting this book for Christmas
This is an amazing psychoanalysis of the ramifications of our past on our future, as well as on our perception of reality, as a whole.
In a time when empathy is running low, this book is a must-read.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 03-12-20
Beautiful writing, but a bit shallow.
I finished The Other Americans by Laila Lalami earlier today, and I have mixed feelings. My next novels are listed at the end!
I loved Lalami's voice. Her matter-of-fact descriptions set an amazing tone that reminded me of Steinbeck, earnest and heartfelt. The structure felt authentic. Bouncing between characters to set a rounded view of the world seemed the right choice. There is a major "but" coming, though.
I felt like she went the contrived route. I foresaw the ending early on, so the mystery portion of the text fell short. On top of that, I felt like her glimpses into the lives of all these characters wasn't full enough. They all felt flat with a tiny stick of internal conflict propping them up. The types of conflict included held a lot of promise, but she never satisfied my hunger for exploration or resolution (which is where a lot of my mixed feelings derive from: is life ever satisfying?).
Overall, I enjoyed the read, but it isn't one I would list as one of my favorite reads.
My next novels (yeah, I'm doing two) are: Erotic Stories for Junjabi Widows and Exhalation.
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- Regina
- 10-02-20
An Immigration Story
The story is uneven. It is almost a great book, but falls short in a few ways. The narration didn't help. The Jeremy reader made the character seem petulant, yet this character had a rich story that I could have liked better if I read the book, I suspect. But who doesn't love Mark Bramhall? The others were adequate but really didn't enrich their character. This might have been improved by a single narrator. The story offered a one of everything character, too: Arab, Mexican, Black, Gay, Veteran, Angry White Guy, Drug Addict...am I leaving anything out? That felt gimmicky to me.
But with all that criticism, I am glad I listened to this book. I suspect Ill think of it time and again as I watch the news and reflect on the world as it is.
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- wewantfast
- 02-03-20
Easy to listen to and follow.
I mostly enjoyed the end, when everything came together and it finally made sense (kind of.) I also appreciated the combination of characters and their different backgrounds.
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- Joe Kraus
- 02-18-20
Solid Premise w-Scattered Execution
There’s a strong novel buried in the book we get here. In fact, I’d even say there are two potentially strong novels here. As it is, though, neither gets either the room or the attention really to shine out, and the result is a novel substantially weaker than Lalami’s earlier, excellent The Moor’s Account.
The Moor’s Account shone because it offered a different foundational narrative for America. Our narrator, Mustafa/Estebanico, is a Muslim slave of a would-be Spanish conquistador, and he takes part in a dramatically failed expedition to find gold in modern day Florida. It’s a big topic told from the striking perspective of a man of color, a Muslim, a slave, and someone opposed to the whole colonial project.
Yet, in a way, he is an “other American,” himself – a figure whose story informs our larger American one even as he falls outside of the histories we tell ourselves.
If The Moor’s Account is a sustained (and successful) exercise in voice, this is a quilt of different voices. Instead of sustained chapters in which Mustafa/Estebanico sorts through the contradictions of his life and addresses his fears that he will be forgotten, we get short chapters from a range of different perspectives. The book seldom sits still long enough to give us a developed character. Above all, for me at least, this falls short because of the way it interrupts one account after another, deferring not just plot points but the full expression of the characters we encounter.
That said, the premise – or I should say the original premise – is very strong. A Muslim restaurant owner is killed in a hit-and-run that might have been a hate crime.
In the first half of the book, we have a kind of whodunit, with the victim’s daughter – Nora, our central character – intent on figuring out who’s guilty. There’s a sub-plot of an undocumented Mexican-American man who witnessed a part of the accident who has to decide whether to report what he saw, or almost saw. There’s another about a high school friend of Nora’s who kindles a you-can-see-it-coming romance with her. And there’s a sister who, seemingly perfect in her American success, is hiding a painkiller addition. And there’s the older white man who owns the bowling alley next door and nurses a politics of resentment. And there is the African-American female detective who, good at her job also juggles the responsibilities of being a worried mother. And there is the mother who wishes she’d never come to America. And there is the dead father who, conveniently, supplies flashbacks just in time to resolve seeming mysteries.
So, yeah, I don’t think it’s much of a mystery, and I don’t think Lalami does either. Roughly halfway through we [SPOILER:] learn that the car that hit Driss was owned by the bowling alley owner next door.
At that point, the premise seems to shift from solving a mystery to coming to terms with the seeming reality that it’s hard to find the line between accident and malice. Oh, and while we’re at it, Nora’s romance with Jeremy heats up so that she is both angrily grieving her father and instantly falling in love with someone she hasn’t thought of since high school.
I think the best of the novel deals with the gray area of the crime/accident, and Lalami has some moments of impressive insight all along. She does a strong job bringing the mother’s voice forward, and she often gets off a strong inner monologue for a character in the midst of an emotional crisis. But, since none of that is sustained and we have so wide a range of different characters, those insights seldom accumulate into something sustained and moving.
[SECOND SPOILER:] At the end, just as the novel seems to lean into its premise that love, mourning, racism, and what it means to be an American all situate in a gray area, we learn that the real culprit isn’t the bowling alley owner but his son, a long-time bully of Nora and Jeremy. He is the epitome of the ugly American, someone who’s self-satisfied and – this being the age of Trump – reasserting the privilege of his nativism and racism.
Oh, and Nora – having dumped Jeremy to return to her life as a contemporary composer – returns in the final pages to reconcile with Jeremy. Happy, sort of, ever after.
There are glimpses of skill here, though not enough to make me quite understand how the same author wrote this and The Moor’s Account. This is, ultimately, conventional even as it thoughtfully weaves a Muslim-American perspective into a larger vision of an “other America.” In contrast, The Moor’s Account, committing to one voice and one larger question, asks a similar question in a singular, tragic voice.
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11 people found this helpful
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- stephjan
- 11-22-22
still thinking
I thought the insight into the characters was amazing. at first I had a hard time listening and even later had a hard time listening to the narrator for Jeremy. only toward the end did I start to appreciate the weaving of the story and the characters personalities.
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- Salvador Lopez Negrete B.
- 06-04-23
Cada voz aporta
Estupenda y HUMANA trama. Cada personaje queda “redondeado y claramente perfilado” por la voz que le da vida. SERÍA UN DESPERDICIO NO AUDIOLEERLO. Gracias Ms Lalami.👏🏼
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- Michelle Daniels
- 05-02-21
Undermined by poor narration
I wish I’d read the book instead. The narration for Jeremy and for Coleman were so bad that I found it difficult to follow the story. Which is too bad because it’s a cleverly told tale of the way we’re all subject to implicit bias, no matter our background. Though some aspects of the plot were easy to predict, there were still some surprises. Unfortunately, I kept thinking I missed important details because I would often tune out when these two characters were carrying the story. If it weren’t for my book club in a few days, I would have returned this and picked up a print copy of the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-27-23
Engaging story; well performed.
I listened to this story while cleaning my house and it made the time fly. I loved the complex characters, the slow unfolding of the story, the underlying police investigation.
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- Dean Ramser
- 12-10-20
Perfect story. Great story. Wonderfully written.
I really enjoyed this story. Great characters, great plot, and perfect for this time. With the world fighting each other this is the story for us now. Thank you
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