Category: personal

My first novel, Secret Son, is being released today. It should be at your local independent bookstore, chain bookstore, and of course it’s available online as well. In fact, readers who pre-ordered the book seem to have gotten it several days early (I’ve already heard from some of them!)

Here’s a little blurb about the novel:

For years, Youssef, a young man from a Casablanca slum, has heard his mother’s stories about his dead and respectably poor father, stories he used as inspiration for his own life. But when a religious group, known simply as The Party, moves into town, he discovers the truth—his father is a wealthy businessman and very much alive. Youssef sets out to find his real father and enters his Westernized world, setting off a chain of events with disastrous consequences. Secret Son, set in modern Morocco against a background of corrupt liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism, explores the struggle for identity and the myriad ways in which the political, the personal, and the religious bind us together.

If you live in any of the cities I’m visiting over the next three weeks, please come by and say hello. I’ll also be doing several radio interviews while on tour. (Tomorrow, for instance, I’ll be on Indiana’s WBOI tomorrow at 10.30 am EST/7.30 am PST, so please tune in.) I will try to post links to print reviews as time permits.

I am in Indianapolis today, to do an event for the Christamore House Guild. I think the event is already sold out, but just in case here is the information:

April 17, 2009
11 am – 3 pm
Christamore House Guild
Book & Author Luncheon
Indiana Roof Ballroom

Right now, I’m sitting in my hotel room, answering interview questions by email and waiting for my hosts to pick me up. More soon, I hope.

In the Guardian, A.L. Kennedy perfectly describes what it’s like to read one’s work at the proof stage:

Proof pages – nearly the finished article, but not quite. They’re a good sign: they mean your book is almost done, almost ready to pack up its things, get published and amble out to meet the reader. But, then again, proofs are also a source of almost primal panic for the writer. If your proofs are awful, wrong, badly-spelled, oddly-italicised and otherwise dysfunctional, they are a very real demonstration of both your complete powerlessness within the editing process and your witless lack of talent within the writing process. They alarm, containing, as they do, all manner of peculiarities and absurdities which have been added by strangers for no clear reason, along with the plethora of screw-ups which are utterly your own fault. How did you miss that non-agreeing verb? Did you ever know what this final sentence means? Will that character stand up to even the most cursory examination? Why did you ever think this was any use? Can anything within the compass of your meagre abilities be done to remedy this papery hellsbroth of shit? You try to hope so – tinkering with and slashing at your proofs: these representing your final chance of day-saving activity, or even just salvaging a couple of decent paragraphs

After I finished checking my proofs for Secret Son—and I am one of those very annoying authors who wants to make changes even as the book is on its way to the printer—I had regular panic attacks about it. I lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, sometimes unable to breathe. But I have to say that, as time passed (six months, to be exact), I’ve started to let go. Alea jacta est and all that. I’m just enjoying the journey now.

I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday because I was busy writing an installment for Money Walks, a serial novel that the Los Angeles Times is debuting this week. So the idea is to start a story and then let a group of writers each take turns telling a part of it. The first installment is by Mary McNamara; the second by Seth Greenland. I wrote the sixth installment, which will appear on Saturday. The final installment will be published on the eve of the Festival of Books.

I’ve been busy doing some press for the novel and so haven’t had a chance to catch up on all things blog. Here, for instance, is a profile in The National newspaper (I am amused by my expression on the photograph. What does it mean?) And here is a radio interview Anouar Majid and I did for The Book Show in Australia, in which we talk about North African literature.

My new novel, Secret Son, comes out on April 21, though it should be on shelves a few days earlier than that. (You can visit Indiebound to find the independent bookstore nearest you.) I’ll be doing a rather extensive book tour to promote the novel, so here are the dates:

April 17 – Indianapolis, Indiana
April 25 – Los Angeles, California
April 27 – Seattle, Washington
April 28 – Portland, Oregon
April 30/May 1 – New York
May 4 – Boston, Massachusetts
May 6 – Washington, DC.
May 7 – New York
May 8 – Miami, Florida
May 14 – Riverside, California
May 14 – Los Angeles, California
May 18 – SF Bay Area, California

Specific details about each event can be found here. So mark you calendar! Bring a friend! Come say hello! If you can’t come to one of the readings, but would still like to have a signed copy, you can pre-order one from Powell’s.