An American Family
A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
This “moving [and] wonderful” memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father, captivating DNC speaker, and 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient is “a story about family and faith [that] can teach all of us what real American patriotism looks like” (The New York Times Book Review).
“[Khizr] Khan offers a valuable perspective as we continue to debate what kind of country we want to be.”—The Washington Post (Best Books of the Year)
Khizr Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And when he offered to lend Donald Trump his own much-read and dog-eared pocket Constitution, his gesture perfectly encapsulated the feelings of millions.
In this urgent and timeless immigrant story, Khan shares the extraordinary, ordinary journey that led him to that moment: He was the oldest of ten children born to farmers in Pakistan. He was a university student who read the Declaration of Independence and was awestruck by what might be possible in life. He was a hopeful suitor, awkwardly but earnestly trying to win the heart of a woman far out of his league. He was a loving father who, having instilled in his children the ideals that enticed him and his wife to America, tragically lost his son, an Army captain, in the Iraq War. He was and is a patriot, and a fierce advocate for the values enshrined in the American system.
An American Family shows us who Khizr Khan and millions of other American immigrants are, and why—especially in these tumultuous times—we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Khan, a Pakistani-American immigrant whose 2016 Democratic National Convention speech condemned Donald Trump for his treatment of Muslim Americans, reveals more about his family, including the life and death of his son Humayun, a U.S. army captain killed in Iraq. Khan's voice is steady throughout the book, though there are moments not only when describing the death of his son, but also early on when recounting his sorrow at being separated from his parents as a boy, or the joy of first discovering the U.S. Constitution when he is audibly overcome by emotion. (That's true for listeners as well; many will be hard-pressed to get to the end of this beautiful memoir without crying.) There are also unexpected moments of wry humor throughout, and Khan proves himself to have a skill for comic timing, like when he quips, "There had been no sexual revolution in Pakistan," after describing his cluelessness at how to court the woman whom he would eventually marry. This moving memoir is made all the more powerful when heard in the voice of the author. A Random House hardcover.
