Home Boy

Three young Pakistani men are living in New York at the turn of the millennium. AC is an academic who spouts gangsta rap, Jimbo is a hulking Pushtun deejay from Jersey City, and Chuck is a wide-eyed new arrival chasing the American Dream and trying to work out who he is. In a city where talent for reinventing yourself counts for more than where you come from, these self-styled Metrostanis boldly make the place their own.

Then, weeks after 9/11, they set off on a road trip into the American interior to look for the Shaman, a Gatsby-like fellow countryman who has apparently vanished. Things go badly wrong, and the three find themselves in an America that has changed and become tense and suspicious.

H.M. Naqvi's debut is lively, bittersweet and sharply observed. It works as an immigrant's story, as a mystery, and as a tale of love and loss, while also reflecting on American life and on what collective identity means.