In the Country I Love - by Alaa Al-Barkawi (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Two Iraqi American best friends--a struggling teen father and the community's golden boy--confront dark truths about their families in the wake of a devastating crime in this heartrending YA debut.

As a seventeen-year-old single dad and a soon-to-be high school drop-out, Yassir Al-Azzawi's lapsed Shia faith is just another thing convincing his parents he's a failure. One more mistake, and they'll send him back to their homeland, a war-torn Iraq.

Khaled Al-Hakim is perfect on paper: devout in his faith, a straight-A student, and captain of the debate team. But beneath the surface, Khaled is no saint either, and his worst sin yet is ignoring his parents' command to stay away from Yassir.

When their secret friendship is exposed, the consequences set off a series of events that cause family secrets from both sides to come to light, and neither Yassir nor Khaled are prepared to learn the stains that taint their family names.

Told through multiple POVs across time, this authentic exploration of the Shia Muslim experience in the U.S. seamlessly combines classic YA themes of identity, coming-of-age, and relationships with timely social themes of racism, Islamophobia, and justice. This compelling, contemporary debut is perfect for fans of Sabaa Tahir's All My Rage and Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.

About the Author

Alaa Al-Barkawi is a first-generation, Iraqi-American Shia Muslim writer. Born to a refugee family, Alaa has called Salt Lake City, Utah home for the past twenty-eight years. She is the founder of SWANApit, a literary pitch event for Southwest Asian and North African writers, which launched in May of 2022. Alaa holds a master's degree in communications from Johns Hopkins University with an emphasis in public and media relations and has worked with refugee and immigrant students for nearly a decade. When she's not writing, you can find her making the next-best vegan cookie recipe she found on Pinterest or haunting her local cafe. Visit her website at alaawrites.com or find her on social media @AlaaBarkawi on X and @AlaaAlBarkawi on Instagram.