A Place for Us

A Novel

De: Fatima Farheen Mirza

Narrado por: Deepti Gupta, Sunil Malhotra

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “5 UNDER 35” NOMINEE • NEW YORK’S “ONE BOOK, ONE NEW YORK” PICK

Named One of the Best Books of the Year: Washington Post • NPR • People • Refinery29 • Parade • BuzzFeed

“Mirza writes with a mercy that encompasses all things.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post

Hailed as “a book for our times” (Christiane Amanpour), A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging.

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best?

A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this 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 here, from Rafiq and Layla’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.

A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.

Beautiful

I loved the insight into the Muslim religion and how it is lived by this family. I appreciate it teasing out what is religion and what is culture, what is healthy and what is not, what serves and what does not. Many of the problems this family faces translates to any family. Congruently, other challenges of living a life of faith in modern society this family encounters also is shared by families of other religions. Life lessons that can apply to anybody bloom by the end of this book.

WOW,

A must read. Will reach every one of your heartstrings and question if you can ever Love your children enough Definitely gave me a new appreciation for mine.

Disappointing

The performance was good through most of the story, and there are interesting characters developed to a point. But then nothing really comes of it. I guess any examination of a family’s inner workings can be interesting, and for me, I was interested in learning a bit about a family with a different culture than mine. And I did learn a little in that regard. But there isn’t enough there to sustain it. I thought the final part, read from another perspective was just rambling regrets of a father, and not believable for the character we spent much of the book with.
I would skip it.

Cliché

Besides the fact that the story was average, it ok much details and the performance very slow (had to put the last let on x1.5 speed); it was disappointing to see yet another book stereotyping Muslim immigrants.

brilliant and heartbreaking

Few books are able to touch the heart as Fatima has with A Place for Us. The characters and their journeys will stay with me indefinitely.