Laleh Khadivi. (2017). A Good Country. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Laleh Khadivi. 2017. A Good Country. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Laleh Khadivi, A Good Country. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

Laleh Khadivi. A Good Country. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

OverDrive Product Record

sortTitle

Good Country

crossRefId

3297187

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2183-1/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2183-1/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2183-1/009/CE9/E0/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2183-1/009/CE9/E0/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781632865861
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01M8MC2HA
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781632865861
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Laleh Khadivi

id

009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a

title

A Good Country

starRating

5

dateAdded

2017-08-18T16:26:00-04:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3297187
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: AGoodCountry_9781632865861_3297187
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 3150271
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781632865861
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 5/23/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: AGoodCountry_3297187
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01M8MC2HA
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 5/23/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: AGoodCountry_9781632865861_3297187
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 1407490
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781632865861
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 5/23/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Khadivi, Laleh
   • bioText: Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution her family fled, finally settling in Canada and then the United States. Khadivi received her MFA from Mills College and was a Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction at Emory University. In 2008 she received The Whiting Writers' Award. In 2009 she published her first novel The Age of Orphans. Laleh Khadivi lives in California.
   • name: Laleh Khadivi

imprint

Bloomsbury USA

publishDate

2017-05-23T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

A Good Country

fullDescription

A "powerful" (NYT) 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?

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: New York Times Book Review
   • content: Powerful . . . Using vivid characters that bound off the page, dialogue that's millennial and local and deliberate to the last word, and settings that evoke American high school so well they send you digging for your CDs and party pics . . . Khadivi's book is meticulous, unsparingly realistic and rich in nuance. . . . As an Iranian-American writer and the child of a Muslim country, I want the world to read this book because of its naked, unflinching honesty.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: 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. A brilliant novel about a young man's reckoning with a flawed and violent world.
3. • premium: False
   • source: San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: Brilliant . . . a tragic and affecting portrait of how radicalization can happen to an ordinary American, profoundly altering him . . . . 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.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal
   • content: 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 novels that rivals such standouts as Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs or Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Shelf Awareness
   • content: A riveting, heartbreaking portrait of one young man's yearning for a good country to call his own.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: 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.
7. • premium: False
   • source: School Library Journal
   • content: The story unfolds deftly, beautifully capturing the psychology of an American teen who goes down the path of radicalization; readers will understand what would motivate a sheltered, shortsighted young person to run away to join extremists . . . Give this expertly written and stirring exploration of a timely subject to readers who enjoy novels that tackle global contemporary issues, such as Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs or Rabee Jaber's Confessions.
8. • premium: False
   • source: The Mercury News, "Books by the Bay"
   • content: 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.
9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 27, 2017
     Concluding a trilogy that began with 2009’s The Age of Orphans and continued with 2013’s The Walking, Khadivi’s stunning and timely portrait of the radicalization of a young Iranian-American man delicately examines the intersections between history, family, religion, and love, asking important questions about identity and our responsibility to the places we come from. Born and raised in southern California to immigrant parents, Rez Courdee is a typical American teenager: pushed to succeed at school and make his parents proud, he rebels with drugs and alcohol, partying, hooking up with girls, and spending long days in the sun on his surfboard. But he falls out with his group of friends after a disastrous surfing trip in Mexico and is welcomed instead into a circle of other children of immigrants who become targets of hate after a terror attack rocks the community. Encouraged by his new friends, Rez learns more about his ancestral heritage, Islam, and the ongoing war in Syria, slowly pulling away from who he was before and looking ahead into an unknown future. 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.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2017
      

      At Laguna Prep, CA, all the kids seem to have money, cars, pools, and parents who don't seem to care what their offspring are up to. All except Rez (Alireza) Coudree, whose Iranian-born father has a low boiling point and a swift hand for his only son. Rez's perfect grades drop as he seeks to assimilate by experimenting with weed, hooking up for casual sex, and becoming addicted to surfing. An illicit road trip to Mexico results in a crime that drives a wedge between Rez and his all-American buddies, and he soon settles back into his studies, winning parent-pleasing awards and hanging out with guys named Arash or Omid. Rez soon falls for Fatima Hassani, ventures into a mosque, and gradually discovers the joy that comes from finding your tribe. Then bombs explode at the Boston Marathon. Suspense builds as microaggressions turn friend on friend, loyalties between country and culture tug at hearts, and the seeds of radicalism are sown. VERDICT Brilliantly channeling the minds of angst-filled teenagers with barely formed worldviews who seesaw between brash self-confidence and deflating insecurities, Whiting and Pushcart Prize winner Khadivi (The Walking) has written an important, smart, timely novel that rivals such standouts as Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs or Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

185

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

009ce9e0-6550-4178-9897-f5443a4a560a

starRating

4.3

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2183-1/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2183-1/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2183-1/009/CE9/E0/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2183-1/009/CE9/E0/{009CE9E0-6550-4178-9897-F5443A4A560A}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: Literature

publishDateText

05/23/2017

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781632865854

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

A "powerful" (NYT) 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...

sortTitle

Good Country

crossRefId

3297187

publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC000000
   • description: Fiction / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC043000
   • description: Fiction / Coming of Age