Why read Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits?

Book cover of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

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“A dream of a debut, by turns troubling and glorious, angry and wise.” —Junot Diaz

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, the debut of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami, evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco. The book begins as four Moroccans illegally cross…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Namrata Poddar

Author

Another powerful debut on border-crossing, this novel begins with a frame-chapter or a prologue of sorts called “The Trip” that shows a group of Moroccans fleeing to Spain for a better life on a ramshackle boat. The following subsections, “Before” and “After,” zoom into the lives of the characters introduced in the opening chapter to highlight the socio-economic reasons leading them to risk their lives by crossing the Mediterranean Sea illegally, and their gritty fate once the boat fails them, as they’re stranded in Spain or deported to Morocco. Some critics have called the novel a collection of interconnected stories,…

From Namrata's list on debuts that subvert the mainstream Westerns.