A Good Country, centered on a young American teen radicalized by none other than upper-class America, couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.”
—SHANNON M. HOUSTON, PASTE MAGAZINE
“A Good Country proves a riveting, heartbreaking portrait of one young man’s yearning for a good country to call his own, “a life made of family and God and love.”
—STARRED REVIEW, SHELF AWARENESS
“Captivating . . . In scene after vibrant scene, [Khadivi] suggests the forces that turn individuals into radicals. With A Good Country, she delivers an unusual and thought-provoking look at the process.”
—GEORGIA ROWE, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
“As accomplished in art as in storytelling, A Good Country addresses a central problem of our time. Is the American melting pot a reality, or is it a mirage?”
A Good Country
“Khadivi is a massive talent, lyrical, evocative, and unsparing . . . 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. . . . 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.”
—STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus Reviews
“With insightful, often moving prose, dialogue so exact it echoes from the page, and a stunning balance between compassion and merciless (often damning) realism, Khadivi begins to unravel one of the mysteries of the modern political era, which isn’t about politics at all but is entirely contained within the flawed and insatiable human heart.”
“Brilliantly channeling the minds of angst-filled teenagers with barely formed worldviews who seesaw between brash self-confidence and deflating insecurities… Khadivi… has written an important, smart, timely novel.”
—STARRED REVIEW, BARBARA HOFFERT, LIBRARY JOURNAL
“A Good Country is expertly shaped, and persuasively investigates an important phenomenon of our times.”
“Khadivi’s writing is always sensitive to the alterity and particularity, the poetry and politics of an individual life.”
—THE INDEPENDENT UK, BOOK REVIEW
“[T]he unerring precision of her prose draws you, piece by piece, into Rez’s orbit and makes you concerned for his welfare once the skies darken.”
—RUSSELL LEADBETTER, THE HERALD
“Khadivi’s carefully crafted, masterful novel illustrates how the perfect storm of teenage cruelty, racism, and tragedy can create an extremist.”
“Stunning and timely . . . 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.”
“A Good Country is a courageous and important conclusion to a magnificent trilogy. It suggests that what’s saddest and most chilling about radicalization is that it arises from deep inside the human condition itself, from the thirst all humans have for connection and meaning. Without these, anyone can be lost.”
A "powerful" 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?