Zain Khalid

An astonishing debut novel about family, sexuality, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers who live above a mosque in Staten Island with their imam father 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. The three boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean, and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are so close as to be almost inseparable. Nevertheless, Youssef is keeping a secret from his brothers: he has an imaginary double, a familiar who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother. Brother is both a balm for the young boy and a curse--he provides solace to Youssef but demands information in exchange. The boys' adoptive father, Imam Salim, is popular in the community, known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. But he is uncharismatic at home, a distant father who spends evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his nighttime excursions from the house, and the truth about what happened to the boys' parents. When Imam Salim's path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys will be forced to follow. There they will be captivated by an opulent, almost futuristic world, a linear city that seems to offer a more sustainable modernity than that of the West, and will find traces of their parents' stories. But they will have to change if they want to survive in this new world, and the arrival of a creature as powerful as Brother will not go unnoticed. With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel--family, capital, power, sexuality, and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.

Brother Alive

Lindsay

memory is often a lie sealed with the hot wax of repetition.

explained that the capitalist project relies on its people maintaining parasocial relationships with politicians and celebrities and one another,

I believe he had begun to understand that he was an entity different from the “I” of his mind and body, that he, like all of us, is the result of protean histories we are helpless to understand.

Tabea Lüth

When we were old enough to ask why he abstained from advocating for his God, even though that, too, was the job of an imam, he said, "I have already performed all the conversions I can stomach.”

A writer I met in Beirut, I think. He went on to say that to have an orange from Palestine, therefore, was like tasting Palestine itself. He was conflicted about this. Was it disrespectful to eat the oranges? Or was it better to consume his homeland so as not to let his homeland consume him? I told bim these were good questions, but not ones we have to worry about if our countries go as they are going.

 Tired of sleeping in a thriving petri dish, I asked Imam Salim for an air conditioner. As was to be expected, he responded by asking me if the freedom fighters in Palestine had air conditioners. I said if they did, they might be more amenable to a two-state solution.

The second mosque was in the South Bronx and more like our own: half-black, half-Arab, all-villain. Many members of the congregation knew loss at the hands of the Americans. Loss of life and dignity and time.

Brother Alive quotes

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