Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a queer, nonbinary, Muslim, immigrant writer who has been reading their whole life and writing for part of it. I learned to write by reading–by devouring all kinds of books across different genres and paying attention to how words create feelings, worlds, and chronologies. I also learned to live by reading–I didn’t grow up with models of how to live a life that was true to my identities and so I read everything I could find about experiences that were adjacent to my own. The emergence of queer Muslim literature has been exciting to follow, and I try to read everything in the field.
Lamya's book list on queer and trans Muslim experiences
Why did Lamya love this book?
This was the first novel I read about immigration, queerness, and Muslimness, the complex reasons why people choose to live in the Global South, and the complex reasons why people choose to leave.
I love the writing: it is lyrical and intimate, and the characters have stayed with me long since.
1 author picked Guapa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
WINNER OF THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2017
"A remarkable debut." - The Huffington Post
"Freewheeling and incendiary." - London Review of Books
"...vibrant, wrenching debut novel...sensuous and caustic, full of smoke and blood." - The New Yorker
A Middle-Eastern capital caught in the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring. A day in the life of a young man disillusioned with both East and West and struggling to find a place for himself in a society ruled by hypocrisy and contradictions. Rasa works as an interpreter for Western journalists by day and divides his nights between the Guapa, an underground…