About the Book
A deeply compelling and funny coming-of-age novel about a teenaged girl's life-changing journey from Pakistan to America, and the challenges of a debilitating illness.
On a year-long exchange programme in rural Oregon, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama. An unforgettably witty narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad; a first kiss, new friends, racism, Islamophobia, homesickness. Along the way Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell until she begins coughing up blood, and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her newly-established world upside down.
'Unforgettable... Rarely does a book sharpen how you see the world around you, but American Fever does just that.' Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
'Marks the debut of a thrilling new global voice' Peter Ho Davies
'In this sharply observed twist on the classic coming-to-America story, we find an America recognizable in all its generosity, cruelty, and sometimes-well-intentioned bumbling. And we find a brilliant exploration of the sacred, scary moment when a girl comes into the wider world' Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work
(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
About the Author :
Dur e Aziz Amna is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program, where drafts of AMERICAN FEVER won the Hopwood and Busch Prizes. She won the Bodley Head / Financial Times Essay Prize and the London Magazine Short Story Competition and has been longlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. Her writing has been featured or shortlisted elsewhere, including the New York Times, Longreads, Roads & Kingdoms, and Dawn. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and children.
Review :
A subversive debut . . . It is the sharpness, and surprise . . . that makes Dur e Aziz Amna's coming-of-age, coming-to-America debut novel stand out . . . The highly quotable Hira is a force to be reckoned with. Her spiky prose style provocatively undercuts received narratives about the 'American dream' from the immigrant's perspective.
What comes sharply into focus in this beautifully written debut, is that we can never leave the past behind
American Fever is the unforgettable story of a teenage girl in a year of transformation. Dur e Aziz Amna navigates the choppy waters of adolescence with blistering insight and humour, and exquisitely captures the way we can long for home while yearning to escape it. Rarely does a book sharpen how you see the world around you, but American Fever does just that. It dazzled me on every page.
"The one thing I shouldn't ever do was take an American's word on America." Good point: take Dur e Aziz Amna's word instead. In this sharply observed twist on the classic coming-to-America story, we find an America recognizable in all its generosity, cruelty, and sometimes-well-intentioned bumbling. And we find a brilliant exploration of the sacred, scary moment when a girl comes into the wider world.
Brave, tender-hearted, and painfully bittersweet, American Fever is a sharply observed debut that announces Dur e Aziz Amna as a brilliant new voice.
In American Fever, Dur e Aziz Amna gives us an unforgettable South Asian protagonist - clever, clear-spoken, equal parts brash and vulnerable - navigating the mores of illness, separation and small-town America. Charming, fearless and politically aware, American Fever is a novel that will stay with you for a long time.
American Fever is an extraordinarily assured and gripping debut. The intelligence, humour and longing of Hira's voice, as she negotiates what it means to belong to a place, will certainly stay with me
Hira's is a voice I won't soon forget; her biting intelligence, her irreverence, and her wit blazes through this riveting, brilliant novel which stuns in its insights, its sensitive understanding of the complexities of identity, of what home means, and what it means to exist within a globalized world. A searing debut.
A poetic, memorable novel. I loved it. Hira is a marvellous creation - American Fever marks the arrival of a hugely promising writer.
A loving and unflinching exploration of home and homeland, the ways they make and unmake us, how they feed us and also eat away our insides. Amna's crystalline prose reflects and refracts, dazzles and captivates.
American Fever is a fresh, fierce bildungsroman - a story of homesickness and adolescent ache, not to mention a biting meta-commentary on what we expect from immigrant narratives. It's a relief to witness America as Hira does, seeing it clearly as an absurd, flawed nation that is all too often, as Hira says, a concept on whose behalf immigrants are unreasonably asked to testify.
American Fever is a beautifully written book . . . Hira [is] a narrator whose insight and skepticism is addictive . . . Excellent
Hira is a compelling, emotionally astute narrator . . . Hira's freshness in the way she assesses the world and herself while skewering the inconsistencies of those around her makes for a layered read . . . Amna's debut novel showcases her adeptness in tackling some of the big migration questions of home and identity within the context of her insightful young protagonist's complex experiences
This is a funny and affecting novel, understated but powerful, a wonderful new spin on the coming-of-age story. A smart, charming debut.
An utterly hypnotic, witty and brilliant novel about young Hira's journey across two oceans... Dur E Aziz Amna's virtuosic way with language kept me enthralled the whole way through. This book is a necessary next-leveling of diasporic consciousness, the unraveling of borders between homeland and newfound home that happens inside of us.
American Fever is an exhilarating juxtaposition of discovery and nostalgia. With great humour and fine attentiveness, Dur e Aziz Amna captures the feverish excitement and confusion of America from the point of view of a young outsider, questioning our assumptions about relationships, politics, food, clothes, illness, grief and beyond. It's a fast-paced yet contemplative story of malaise and opportunity, intercultural (mis)understanding, and transgenerational debt. Every page is filled with the zest of life that makes you want more.
Fierce, razor-sharp, poignant, and rendered with fiery wit and deep empathy for human foibles, American Fever is a powerful tale of exile, identity, and belonging in our complex world.
A gripping debut on a journey that so many young people embark on but very little is written about with such audacity, skill and compassion. The narrative toggle between teenage and adult Hira adds depth to an already evocative book.
Gorgeous... Amna is a bold storyteller skilled at blending character, plot, and the kind of existential crises that keep us up at night. Her debut novel, American Fever-as propulsive as it is lyrical, as hilarious as it is sobering-is, above all, an irresistible read from an impressive new literary voice.
Completely engrossing . . . Amna's prose moves along quickly and Hira's appraisal of the people and places she encounters is sharp and untarnished by tact. At times, her wit and judgement land like the crack of a whip and leave you both laughing and uncomfortable.
When I finished reading the novel, I was filled with gratitude for finding this brilliant voice from our country at the start of her career . . . Dur e Aziz Amna is a writer that every Pakistani should be reading.
Prose that dances with charge and potency . . . American Fever firmly puts Amna on the literary map as a sharp young voice to look out for. Its striking cast of characters, both Pakistani and American, stand out in their pugnacious individuality, and its potent themes are woven through the story with genuine subtlety
