Older Brother
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Prix Goncourt Winner: A "superb" novel of a Syrian immigrant in France and his two sons (The New York Times Book Review).
Older Brother is the poignant story of a Franco-Syrian family whose father and two sons try to integrate themselves into a society that doesn't offer them many opportunities.
The father, an atheist communist who moved from Syria to France for his studies and stayed for love, has worked for decades driving a taxi to support his family. The eldest son is a driver for an app-based car service, which comically puts him at odds with his father, whose very livelihood is threatened by this new generation of disruptors. The younger son, shy and serious, works as a nurse in a French hospital. Jaded by the regular rejections he encounters in French society, he decides to join a Muslim humanitarian organization to help wounded civilians in the war in Syria. But when he stops sending news home, the silence begins to eat away at his father and brother, who wonder what his real motivations were. And when the younger brother returns home, he has changed . . .
"A masterpiece of a first novel." —The Guardian
"A striking debut that reveals the breadth of emotional disconnection that prejudice can stoke within a family." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lives of two brothers take radically different paths in Guven's thoughtful and sometimes surprisingly witty debut. The brothers, in their 20s and dissatisfied with their lives, are the sons of a Syrian emigre taxi driver in Paris and a French mother who has died by the time the story begins. The older brother, who doesn't reveal his name or his brother's until the final pages of the novel, and who narrates the majority of the story, drives for Uber, serves as a police informant as an alternative to going to jail for dealing drugs, and smokes a lot of marijuana. His younger, more serious and idealistic brother gives up work as a nurse in a Paris hospital to go to Syria as part of a Muslim organization that turns out to be not strictly humanitarian. When he arrives back in France, attempting to hide his presence, his brother must decide how far family loyalty goes. Of the two narratives, the older brother's complex and lively portion is the highlight. He's a flawed but thoroughly irresistible guy, and his observations of life in immigrant France are vividly detailed and credible. The novel's real accomplishment is in depicting the stresses of everyday life for Muslim immigrants in France. This is a winning debut.
