NEWS

EW Calls A PLACE FOR US “The Thinking Person’s Summer Read”

Our new Igloo Book Buzz selection is a transformative debut novel, A PLACE FOR US. “To be taken hostage by Fatima Farheen Mirza’s heartrending and timely story is a gutting pleasure,” says Sarah Jessica Parker, Editorial Director of SJP for Hogarth, of her newly published inaugural acquisition for the imprint. “It allows her reader to better understand what it means to reconcile one’s love of family and culture with a desire to find one’s own path, and one’s own faith. Ms. Mirza painstakingly details the life of an Indian Muslim family in America and their children’s search to feel whole, fulfilled, and content. She captures your mind and heart with an urgency that defies you to stop reading. I guarantee you will be different when you close the book.”

A PLACE FOR US transports readers back to the beginning of a family’s life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is in its pages, from the mother and father’s own arrival in America from India, to the years in which their children—each in their own way—tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home.

Fatima Farheen Mizra photo by Gregg Richards

Ms. Mirza: “I began writing this novel when I was a freshman in college, and it was my love for the characters—Layla, Rafiq, Hadia, and Amar, members of a single family—that committed me to the project. I was interested in exploring what it means when to be loyal to oneself is to betray the home you have come from, the bond between siblings as well as their betrayals, and the decisions that each character makes that determines not only their own destiny, but also the lives of their loved ones. After working on the novel for eight years, I could not be happier with the home it has found. Speaking with Sarah Jessica Parker and Lindsay Sagnette and seeing the care and enthusiasm they bring to their books has been deeply comforting. I’m confident in their vision for the novel and grateful that it will be brought into the world by SJP for Hogarth.”

Here is a sampling of praise this buzz-worthy book and author have earned:

• “Ambitious… a family epic that is textured and keenly felt… Mirza draws Amar’s lifelong struggle with the concept of unconditional devotion so poignantly that readers will find it exceedingly relatable. But so too is the mysterious whisper in his ear urging him always to return, no matter how far he strays, back home.” – The New York Times Book Review
• “Mirza, 27, is about to become a star…The debut author brings us the thinking person’s summer read, a rich and layered tale about family and assimilation.” — Entertainment Weekly “
• “It is absolutely gorgeous… Mirza writes about family life with the wisdom, insight and patience you would expect from a mature novelist adding a final masterpiece to her canon, but this is, fortunately, just the start of an extraordinary career.” – The Washington Post
• “An affecting, authentic and artful debut by Fatima Farheen Mirza…The novel is deeply moving and surprisingly insightful. Mirza’s writing is poignantly beautiful.” – Associated Press
• “The book dives into the lives of a Muslim-American family, opening on the eve of the eldest daughter’s marriage, and examines the intricacies of a family straddling two very different cultures.” — Vanity Fair
• “Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A PLACE FOR US is everything I love about family sagas. It traverses time and place, explores the conflicts between a parent’s expectation and a child’s desires, and, most importantly, introduces us to fully imagined, flawed characters whose relationships are deep, entangled, and rich in love. The story — which centers on an American Muslim family navigating the tension between tradition and autonomy — is told in fragments, jumping from one character to another, slowly adding layers to scenes by revisiting interactions from multiple perspectives. And Mirza renders this family with a gentle hand, lovingly, so that each character will make their way into your heart.” — Buzzfeed