{"id":17394,"date":"2012-05-14T14:07:24","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T18:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=17394"},"modified":"2014-05-16T00:01:42","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T04:01:42","slug":"american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/","title":{"rendered":"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"American<\/a>In a sentence, American Dervish<\/em> is about a young boy’s indoctrination into Islam\u00a0\u2013 the religion he was born into, but from the practice of which his parents have lapsed (by choice) \u2013 and his eventual withdrawal from his fervent childhood devotion. By extension, the novel also exposes the oftentimes extreme divide between fundamentalist religion\u00a0\u2013 its mindless rules and regulations\u00a0\u2013 and true spirituality.<\/p>\n

Dervish<\/em> begins essentially backwards with protagonist Hayat Shah already a college student \u2013 feeling “at once brave and ridiculous”\u00a0eating bratwurst, choosing not to leave a class from which the rest of his fellow Muslim students have fled in anger (and fear) from that day’s “‘in-cen-<\/em>diary!” discussion, glibly announcing that he’s a Mutazalite (“[a] school of Muslims that don’t believe in the Quran as the eternal word of God … [who] died off a thousand years ago”), and initiating\u00a0a relationship with a young Jewish woman. By the end of this prologue, Mina\u00a0\u2013 Hayat’s mother’s closest friend from childhood who became his religious enabler \u2013\u00a0has died … and Hayat’s new love interest gently reaches out and says, “‘Tell me.'”<\/p>\n

Mina “had, perhaps, the greatest influence on my life,” Hayat acknowledges. Escaping a stifling, disastrous marriage in her native Pakistan, the independent, lively, gorgeous Mina arrives with her toddler son in the American Midwest and moves into the Shah family home. Hayat is enthralled, and his less-than-happily-married parents newly joyous. Mina warmly, lovingly begins Hayat’s spiritual education which, in his sexually-maturing adolescent mind, eventually morphs into an\u00a0obsessive\u00a0attachment to Mina. When Mina becomes romantically involved with Hayat’s father’s medical partner and best friend, Hayat’s single act of youthful jealousy sets in motion an overwhelming tragedy with lifelong consequences …<\/p>\n

Dervish<\/em> will surely persuade you that\u00a0Ayad Akhtar<\/a>\u00a0is one of those very rare writers whose debut titles hit shelves fully formed. Perhaps his earlier dramatic experiences (Brown diploma in theater, serious actor training as both student and teacher, several stage productions) and filmic accomplishments (Columbia grad degree, more screenplays, numerous award nominations) gave him the foundation to do what he does so undeniably well on the page. Clear your calendar for an uninterrupted few hours: Akhtar absolutely knows how to tell this story \u2013 achingly, convincingly, memorably.<\/p>\n

Tidbit<\/strong>: With such a practiced background, no surprise that Akhtar is also a most excellent narrator: he’s his own reader in the audible version. That Akhtar thanks\u00a0Firdous Bamji<\/a>\u00a0(whose voice alone will make me stick a book in my ears) in his acknowledgments adds another layer of well-deserved approval. Akhtar made my last 50K race pass quickly … too bad he doesn’t have another title to join me for a 50-miler in two weeks!<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a sentence, American Dervish is about a young boy’s indoctrination into Islam\u00a0\u2013 the religion he was born into, but from the practice of which his parents have lapsed (by choice) \u2013 and his eventual withdrawal from his fervent childhood devotion. By extension, the novel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,1021,18],"tags":[1429,1430,84,6608,58,59,10,13,55],"class_list":["post-17394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-pakistani-american","category-south-asian-american","tag-american-dervish","tag-ayad-akhtar","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-cultural-exploration","tag-family","tag-love","tag-religious-differences"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a sentence, American Dervish is about a young boy’s indoctrination into Islam\u00a0\u2013 the religion he was born into, but from the practice of which his parents have lapsed (by choice) \u2013 and his eventual withdrawal from his fervent childhood devotion. By extension, the novel...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-14T18:07:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-16T04:01:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2012\/05\/American-Dervish.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"948\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1473\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - BookDragon","og_description":"In a sentence, American Dervish is about a young boy’s indoctrination into Islam\u00a0\u2013 the religion he was born into, but from the practice of which his parents have lapsed (by choice) \u2013 and his eventual withdrawal from his fervent childhood devotion. By extension, the novel...","og_url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/","og_site_name":"BookDragon","article_published_time":"2012-05-14T18:07:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-05-16T04:01:42+00:00","og_image":[{"width":948,"height":1473,"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2012\/05\/American-Dervish.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@SmithsonianAPA","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/","name":"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - BookDragon","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-05-14T18:07:24+00:00","dateModified":"2014-05-16T04:01:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/american-dervish-by-ayad-akhtar\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/","name":"BookDragon","description":"Books for the Diverse Reader","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d","name":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/@SmithsonianAPA"],"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author\/riemert\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17394"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27383,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17394\/revisions\/27383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}