Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Laila Lalami

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 - Fiction - 188 pages

In her exciting debut, Laila Lalami evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco and offers an authentic look at the Muslim immigrant experience today.



The book begins as four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain. There’s Murad, a gentle, educated man who’s been reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier; Halima, who’s fleeing her drunken husband and the slums of Casablanca; Aziz, who must leave behind his devoted wife to find work in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic whose faith is at odds with an influential man determined to destroy her future.

What has driven these men and women to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger? Sensitively written with beauty and boldness, this is a grip ping book about people in search of a better future.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - mmaestiho - www.librarything.com

Beautifully told and so very Moroccan. Many people try to evoke Morocco or the Middle East/North Africa region by describing things elaborately but Lalami paints a picture more true to Morocco, as ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - SqueakyChu - LibraryThing

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. It tells the stories of four individuals in two sets of vignettes. The first set is of the four of them in Morocco; the second set tells what happened to the four ...

Contents

• THE TRIP I: 4
• THE FANATIC: 19
• BUS RIDES: 52
• ACCEPTANCE: 74
• BETTER LUCK TOMORROW: 95
• THE SAINT: 113
• THE ODALISQUE I 27: 146
• THE STORYTELLER: 168
• Acknowledgments: 187

About the author

LAILA LALAMI was born and raised in Morocco. Her work has appeared in the Baltimore Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Independent, the Nation, and elsewhere. She is the creator and editor of the literary blog www.moorishgirl.com. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits; A Harvest book
• Author: Laila Lalami
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006
• ISBN: 015603087X, 9780156030878
• Length: 188 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary