When, years later, Imam Salim’s path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys, now adults, will be forced to follow.
Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health and the truth about what happened to the boys’ parents. The boys’ adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known in the community for his stirring and radical sermons, but at home he often keeps himself to himself, spending his evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, reading poetry or writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Brother persists as a companion into Youssef’s adult life, supporting him but also stealing his memories and shaking his grip on the world.
Youssef shares everything with his brothers, except for one secret: he sees a hallucinatory double, an imaginary friend who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting familiar he calls Brother. The three boys are an inseparable trio, but conspicuous: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean, and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern. They are adopted as infants and share a bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and underserved neighborhoods. In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. From the finalist for the NBCC John Leonard Prize and NYPL Young Lions Award , an astonishing debut novel about family, sexuality, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers who live above a mosque in Staten Island with their imam father
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