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Summary
Summary
A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California--about where identity truly lies, and how we find it.
Laguna Beach, California, 2011. Alireza Courdee, a 16-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels like an American teen. Life is smooth; even lying to his strict parents comes easily.
But then he changes again, falling out with the bad boy surfers and in with a group of kids more awake to the world around them, who share his background, and whose ideas fill him with a very different sense of purpose. Within a year, Reza and his girlfriend are making their way to Syria to be part of a Muslim nation rising from the ashes of the civil war.
Timely, nuanced, and emotionally forceful, A Good Country is a gorgeous meditation on modern life, religious radicalization, and a young man caught among vastly different worlds. What we are left with at the dramatic end is not an assessment of good or evil, east versus west, but a lingering question that applies to all modern souls: Do we decide how to live, or is our life decided for us?
Author Notes
Laleh Khadivi is the author of The Age of Orphans , a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, and The Walking . She has been awarded a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Literature Fellowship. She has also worked as a director, producer, and cinematographer of documentary films. Her debut film, 900 Women , aired on A&E and premiered at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Khadivi lives in Northern California and teaches at the University of San Francisco MFA.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Concluding a trilogy that began with 2009's The Age of Orphans and continued with 2013's The Walking, Khadivi's stunning and timely portrait of the radicalization of a young Iranian-American man delicately examines the intersections between history, family, religion, and love, asking important questions about identity and our responsibility to the places we come from. Born and raised in southern California to immigrant parents, Rez Courdee is a typical American teenager: pushed to succeed at school and make his parents proud, he rebels with drugs and alcohol, partying, hooking up with girls, and spending long days in the sun on his surfboard. But he falls out with his group of friends after a disastrous surfing trip in Mexico and is welcomed instead into a circle of other children of immigrants who become targets of hate after a terror attack rocks the community. Encouraged by his new friends, Rez learns more about his ancestral heritage, Islam, and the ongoing war in Syria, slowly pulling away from who he was before and looking ahead into an unknown future. Khadivi masterfully succeeds in pulling off a deep and searching investigation into Rez's journey from one world to another, following through on her relentlessly emotional vision all the way to its wrenching conclusion. This is a heartbreaking coming-of-age story about the world we live in now. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* How is it possible for a young man or woman raised by loving parents in a financially stable or even prosperous home to become radicalized? This is the question Khadivi (The Walking, 2013) posits in her engrossing third novel, which centers on Reza Courdee, an Iranian-American boy growing up in a posh Southern California beach town. Smart and studious Reza's first set of friends in high school are white stoners who introduce him to pot, girls, and surfing. But after a jaunt to Mexico goes awry, all but one of the boys shuns Reza, who is then befriended by a charismatic Muslim boy named Arash. When the brother of one of Reza's former friends is injured in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack, Reza and Arash find themselves isolated and targeted by their classmates. Arash turns to his faith, while Reza falls for Fatima, a beautiful friend of Arash's who is also becoming more devout. Reza's skepticism towards religion begins to crumble in the face of the everyday prejudice he is forced to battle. Khadivi's carefully crafted, masterful novel illustrates how the perfect storm of teenage cruelty, racism, and tragedy can create an extremist.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE ONE DEVICE: The Secret History of the iPhone, by Brian Merchant. (Little, Brown, $28.) This book dispels some of the fog that surrounds the iPhone, making visible the human labor that creates it - including its development and production and the origin of some of the technologies it uses. MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, by Jonathan Taplin. (Little, Brown, $29.) A tech pioneer argues that the radical libertarianism and greed of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have undermined the communal idealism of the early internet. A FINE MESS: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, by T. R. Reid. (Penguin Press, $27.) Reid approaches the subject of tax reform with a wry voice and a light touch. A world tour of tax systems reveals other countries' efforts to redesign their systems. THE SEEDS OF LIFE: From Aristotle to da Vinci, From Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From, by Edward Dolnick. (Basic Books, $28.) Not until 1875 was the process of human reproduction fully understood. This is a fascinating record of the quest. A GOOD COUNTRY, by Laleh Khadivi. (Bloomsbury, $27.) The son of prosperous Iranian-American immigrants, searching for his identity, becomes alienated and eventually radicalized. This powerful novel is marked by moving prose, vivid characters and a balance between compassion and merciless realism. THE COLOR OF LAW: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein. (Liveright, $27.95.) Most residential segregation in America is de jure - that is, it derives from policy or law, which was supported by virtually every presidential administration since the 19th century. This powerful and disturbing account is also a call to arms. THE HEIRS, by Susan Rieger. (Crown, $26.) When a wealthy New York lawyer dies, his wife and five sons learn he may have had a second, secret life and another family. The sons want the truth; their mother is not so sure. With grace and finesse, this polished novel explores their varying responses. FLY ME, by Daniel Riley. (Little, Brown, $27.) In this debut novel, set in Southern California in the '70s, a Vassar-grad stewardess becomes involved in a drug smuggling operation while her husband quotes Pynchon. Riley writes about the era with captivating authority. HOW TO BE HUMAN, by Paula Cocozza. (Metropolitan/Holt, $26.) A lonely woman becomes involved with a fox in her London garden in this hypnotic first novel. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
School Library Journal Review
Rez Courdee, 14, is an excellent student who lives in Laguna Beach, CA, with his quiet, unreligious, but traditional Iranian parents. He breaks away from his image as an academic overachiever, trying pot and hooking up with girls. Surfer friends introduce Rez to the quest for the best waves, so he joins them for a trip to Mexico, which goes terribly wrong. The boys make it home, but they blame Rez for the trouble they get into. Lonely after his friends drop him, Rez is drawn to Fatima, who takes him to her mosque, and after a terrorist attack, he connects with others at school who, like him, have been scapegoated because of their religious background. He looks online for information about Islam, the religion of his ancestors, and is seduced by speeches calling for a new life in the new caliphate. A friend who has already left for Syria convinces Rez and Fatima to join him. Instead of taking the train to college, he and Fatima fool their families and fly to Syria, where they plan to marry. The story unfolds deftly, beautifully capturing the psychology of an American teen who goes down the path of radicalization; readers will understand what would motivate a sheltered, shortsighted young person to run away to join extremists. VERDICT Give this expertly written and stirring exploration of a timely subject to readers who enjoy novels that tackle global contemporary issues, such as Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs or Rabee Jaber's Confessions.-Karlan Sick, formerly at New York Public Library © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An American-born son of Iranian immigrants becomes radicalized.Rez Courdee is the son of well-to-do Iranian immigrants. His father is strict, his mother retiring. Rez performs well at his private Southern California high school. At first, Rez is a "typical" American teenager, blissfully numbing himself with surfing and drugs to the complexities of his life and world. But after the Boston Marathon and another massacre closer to home, Rez can't ignore the fact that he is treated with suspicion and prejudice by the same white community with which he has spent his entire life. Khadivi's (The Walking, 2013, etc.) latest novel is the story of a young man's gradual radicalization. A filmmaker as well as a writer, Khadivi is a massive talent, lyrical, evocative, and unsparing. Her latest work completes a loose trilogy of novels that traces a line of genealogy down from Rez's grandfather to his father to himself. But Rez's story stands on its own. His radicalization takes place gradually, the result of a countless number of small intertwining factors rather than one overwhelming reason. That makes Rez's journey believable, his psychological transition vivid and real. You'll sympathize with Rez even as you find yourself devastated by his ultimate choices. Khadivi's feat is a crucial one, especially at this moment in time, when young Muslim men are dehumanized by white Americans far more often than they are understood to be complicated, and individual, human beings. The book has only two small flaws. The first is that, though there is brief mention early on that Rez has a sister, she is never seen or heard from again. The second flaw, if it is a flaw, is one that afflicts all books, everywhere, and that is that the story, finally, must come to an end. You won't want the book to end. You will want to follow Rez. You will want to hear what happens next. A brilliant novel about a young man's reckoning with a flawed and violent world. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
At Laguna Prep, CA, all the kids seem to have money, cars, pools, and parents who don't seem to care what their offspring are up to. All except Rez (Alireza) Coudree, whose Iranian-born father has a low boiling point and a swift hand for his only son. Rez's perfect grades drop as he seeks to assimilate by experimenting with weed, hooking up for casual sex, and becoming addicted to surfing. An illicit road trip to Mexico results in a crime that drives a wedge between Rez and his all-American buddies, and he soon settles back into his studies, winning parent-pleasing awards and hanging out with guys named Arash or Omid. Rez soon falls for Fatima Hassani, ventures into a mosque, and gradually discovers the joy that comes from finding your tribe. Then bombs explode at the Boston Marathon. Suspense builds as microaggressions turn friend on friend, loyalties between country and culture tug at hearts, and the seeds of radicalism are sown. Verdict Brilliantly channeling the minds of angst-filled teenagers with barely formed worldviews who seesaw between brash self-confidence and deflating insecurities, Whiting and Pushcart Prize winner Khadivi (The Walking) has written an important, smart, timely novel that rivals such standouts as Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs or Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]-Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.