News
I’m back in Los Angeles after a wonderful couple of weeks on tour, during which I got to meet family, friends, and readers. It was such a treat to talk about The Other Americans with audiences in Boston, DC, New York, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. So thank you to everyone who came out to the events!
While I was traveling, reviews of The Other Americans appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Seattle Times, and NPR . Profiles appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Lit Hub. I also did interviews with Electric Literature, the Observer, and KQED Forum.
Also last month, while I was dashing out of my hotel room to catch a train, I found out that the Today Show had featured The Other Americans in a segment on book clubs! Isaac Fitzgerald recommended the novel and Alejandra Ramos suggested a menu to match it. You can watch the segment here. And please tell your book club about it!
Photo: Powell’s marquee.
I spoke to Lulu Garcia-Navarro on NPR’s Weekend Edition about my new novel, writing from different perspectives, and the diversity of immigrant experiences. You can listen to the interview here:
The Guardian‘s Hadley Freeman profiled me for the paper, ahead of the release of my new book in the UK. Here’s a taste:
This feeling of separateness – of being, as she puts it, “the person in the corner observing everything but who no one pays attention to” – would become a running theme in her life. Despite being working class, her parents sent her to a French-speaking school, usually the choice of upper-class families, “so that was another feeling of, you’re in here but not of us,” she says. Lalami grew up speaking Arabic at home, French at school and, eventually, English at work, and this flowing between different languages taught her that the usual barriers between people are more porous than most assume.
You can read the rest here. Early reviews of The Other Americans in the UK have appeared in the Times and The Economist.
The Other Americans is out! The book launch party was at Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood, where I was in conversation with the brilliant David Ulin. It was wonderful to finally share the book with readers after being alone with it for so long!
Early reviews have appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Time, and Entertainment Weekly. I’m also thrilled to report that Esquire and the WSJ picked it as one of their best books for spring.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be visiting Boston, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. You can find details about the first leg of my book tour on my events page.