Good People
A Novel
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“[A] gorgeous and powerful debut.”—Tommy Orange, The New York Times
“Good People is the year’s first great novel.”—The Minnesota Star Tribune
“A stunning read. I could not recommend it more enthusiastically. . . . What a spectacular triumph this book is. This is the Afghan novel I have been eagerly waiting for.”—Khaled Hosseini
ONE THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2026 SO FAR
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sabit debuts with an electrifying whodunit about the suspicious death of an Afghan American teen. The Sharaf family fled Afghanistan for northern Virginia, where Rahmat manages to build a fortune via a one-man gutter-cleaning business while Maryam raises their four children. They move into a mansion and send their children to exclusive schools, with visions of their older daughter, Zorah, attending an Ivy League university and becoming a Supreme Court justice. Then Zorah's body is found in a submerged Mercedes, and her death is rumored to be an honor killing. Structured like an oral history, in which none of the Sharafs speak for themselves, the novel creates a complex portrait of the family through interviews with others in their Afghan community along with classmates, school officials, lawyers and journalists. Along the way, Sabit lays bare jealousies, rifts, and competing perceptions. For example, the first-generation immigrants interviewed describe Zorah as a girl run amok, while her classmates recall a girl who dressed modestly in gym class and wasn't allowed to mention boys at home. While the large cast blurs together, Sabit expertly captures the cadence of her characters' voices and the tangle of their cultural biases. This propulsive tale heralds Sabit as a writer worth keeping tabs on.
