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Product Description
“Naqvi’s fast-paced plot, foul-mouthed erudition and pitch-perfect dialogue make for a stellar debut.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
They are renaissance men. They are bons vivants. They are three young Pakistani men in New York City at the turn of the millennium: AC, a gangsta-rap-spouting academic; Jimbo, a hulking Pushtun DJ from the streets of Jersey City; and Chuck, a wideeyed kid, fresh off the boat from the homeland, just trying to get by. Things start coming together for Chuck when he unexpectedly secures a Wall Street gig and begins rolling with socialites and scenesters flanked by his pals, who routinely bring down the house at hush-hush downtown haunts. In a city where origins matter less than the talent for self-invention, the three Metrostanis have the guts to claim the place as their own.
But when they embark on a road trip to the hinterland weeks after 9/11 in search of the Shaman, a Gatsbyesque compatriot who seemingly disappears into thin air, things go horribly wrong. Suddenly, they find themselves in a changed, charged America.
Rollicking, bittersweet, and sharply observed, Home Boy is at once an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, and a story of love and loss, as well as a unique meditation on Americana and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
They are renaissance men. They are bons vivants. They are three young Pakistani men in New York City at the turn of the millennium: AC, a gangsta-rap-spouting academic; Jimbo, a hulking Pushtun DJ from the streets of Jersey City; and Chuck, a wideeyed kid, fresh off the boat from the homeland, just trying to get by. Things start coming together for Chuck when he unexpectedly secures a Wall Street gig and begins rolling with socialites and scenesters flanked by his pals, who routinely bring down the house at hush-hush downtown haunts. In a city where origins matter less than the talent for self-invention, the three Metrostanis have the guts to claim the place as their own.
But when they embark on a road trip to the hinterland weeks after 9/11 in search of the Shaman, a Gatsbyesque compatriot who seemingly disappears into thin air, things go horribly wrong. Suddenly, they find themselves in a changed, charged America.
Rollicking, bittersweet, and sharply observed, Home Boy is at once an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, and a story of love and loss, as well as a unique meditation on Americana and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is simply the best novel I have read in years (and I read a lot of novels). Funnier than Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, more substantive than Shteyngart's Absurdistan, Naqvi achieves a masterly comic prose: witty, intelligent, sensitive, poignant, hilarious, all at the same time.
Naqvi is the shrewdest observer of cosmopolitan urban life that I know, with a unique eye for just the right telling detail. Even as seasoned and celebrated a novelist as Salman Rushdie tried and failed to capture the New York City zeitgeist of the new millenium in his novel Fury, but Naqvi succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly where Rushdie couldn't.
This novel shows how people from all over the world (whether from Pakistan or Senegal or Korea) easily become "New Yorkers" in no time. The plot is compelling and the language is exquisite. Buy it. Read it. And then you'll end up buying many copies for friends, just as I did.
Young Husain Murtaza Naqvi is the, ah, new South Asian writer to watch.
Naqvi is the shrewdest observer of cosmopolitan urban life that I know, with a unique eye for just the right telling detail. Even as seasoned and celebrated a novelist as Salman Rushdie tried and failed to capture the New York City zeitgeist of the new millenium in his novel Fury, but Naqvi succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly where Rushdie couldn't.
This novel shows how people from all over the world (whether from Pakistan or Senegal or Korea) easily become "New Yorkers" in no time. The plot is compelling and the language is exquisite. Buy it. Read it. And then you'll end up buying many copies for friends, just as I did.
Young Husain Murtaza Naqvi is the, ah, new South Asian writer to watch.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This horribly smart, funny novel is all heart -- with a sliver of ice. You won't know what's been done to you -- or, for you -- until you finish reading, but you'll be riveted all the way. The howling dislocation of being a Pakistani in New York just after 9/11 could not possibly be better rendered, nor could the sea change of that era, the grit that settled forever and made us grow up. This is a work of art that helps to define our times, to answer the nagging question: who are we, really? To do all that, it shouldn't be so much fun to read. But it is. It is.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
11 reviews
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
An Exercise in Cosmopolitanism
27 Aug 2009
Format:Hardcover
This is simply the best novel I have read in years (and I read a lot of novels). Funnier than Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, more substantive than Shteyngart's Absurdistan, Naqvi achieves a masterly comic prose: witty, intelligent, sensitive, poignant, hilarious, all at the same time.
Naqvi is the shrewdest observer of cosmopolitan urban life that I know, with a unique eye for just the right telling detail. Even as seasoned and celebrated a novelist as Salman Rushdie tried and failed to capture the New York City zeitgeist of the new millenium in his novel Fury, but Naqvi succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly where Rushdie couldn't.
This novel shows how people from all over the world (whether from Pakistan or Senegal or Korea) easily become "New Yorkers" in no time. The plot is compelling and the language is exquisite. Buy it. Read it. And then you'll end up buying many copies for friends, just as I did.
Young Husain Murtaza Naqvi is the, ah, new South Asian writer to watch.
Naqvi is the shrewdest observer of cosmopolitan urban life that I know, with a unique eye for just the right telling detail. Even as seasoned and celebrated a novelist as Salman Rushdie tried and failed to capture the New York City zeitgeist of the new millenium in his novel Fury, but Naqvi succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly where Rushdie couldn't.
This novel shows how people from all over the world (whether from Pakistan or Senegal or Korea) easily become "New Yorkers" in no time. The plot is compelling and the language is exquisite. Buy it. Read it. And then you'll end up buying many copies for friends, just as I did.
Young Husain Murtaza Naqvi is the, ah, new South Asian writer to watch.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Home Boy
7 Sep 2009
Format:Hardcover
H. M. Naqvi's Home Boy takes the reader to post-9/11 Manhattan through the eyes of Chuck and his two "chums," AC and Jimbo. The three are suddenly wrenched from their bon vivant cosmopolitan lives when they're picked up by the FBI and thrown into a detention center for questioning.
Naqvi's narrative and dialogue are brilliantly rendered, capturing the ethos and ethnicity of the New York experience in tones that for me bring Faulkner to mind rather than Rushdie. Race, religion and tough guy interrogation tactics reveal a coming of age, not only for Chuck and his chums, but everyone in a time when precarious human rights can be dispensed with on the basis of suspicion alone.
By contrast, Naqvi also explores the lifetime bonds of family and friendship. It's a tale of tragedy and laughter, both captured in unforgettable scenes. For instance, the classes and test Chuck has to take before getting his NY cab driver's license after being laid off in the banking business.
H. M. Naqvi is an extraordinary raconteur. His gifts of insight match his gift of gab.
Naqvi's narrative and dialogue are brilliantly rendered, capturing the ethos and ethnicity of the New York experience in tones that for me bring Faulkner to mind rather than Rushdie. Race, religion and tough guy interrogation tactics reveal a coming of age, not only for Chuck and his chums, but everyone in a time when precarious human rights can be dispensed with on the basis of suspicion alone.
By contrast, Naqvi also explores the lifetime bonds of family and friendship. It's a tale of tragedy and laughter, both captured in unforgettable scenes. For instance, the classes and test Chuck has to take before getting his NY cab driver's license after being laid off in the banking business.
H. M. Naqvi is an extraordinary raconteur. His gifts of insight match his gift of gab.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Love The Book-Both Entertaining & Touching-A MUST BUY
7 Sep 2009
Format:Hardcover
I simply loved this book! It's both entertaining ad touching! A lovely journey through the triumphs and losses of young man finding his way in New York. "Homeboy" ends with the bittersweet strength one finds at the remains of a day marking the end of youth. A novel with heart, "Homeboy" is a must read!
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