Older Brother

By Mahir Guven

"A masterpiece."--The Guardian

"Superb."--The New York Times Review of Books

Older brother is a driver for an app-based car service. Closed off for eleven hours every day in his cab, constantly tuned in to the radio, he ruminates about his life and the world that is waiting just on the other side of the windshield.
Younger brother set out for Syria several months ago, full of idealism. Hired as a nurse by a Muslim humanitarian organization, he has recently stopped sending any news back home.
This silence eats away at his father and brother, who ask themselves over and over again: why did he leave? One evening, the intercom rings. Little brother has come home.
In this incisive first novel, Mahir Guven alternates between lively humour and the gravity imposed by the threat of terrorism. He explores a world of Uberized workers, weighed down by loneliness, struggling to survive, but he also describes the universe of those who are actors in the global jihad: indoctrination, combat, their impossible return . . . This 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Release date: Oct 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781787701977

Mahir Guven

Mahir Guven was born in 1986 in Nantes, the stateless child of refugees, his mother from Turkey and his Kurdish father from Iraq. He grew up with his grandmother between the city and vineyards. Older Brother, his first novel, was awarded the Goncourt First Novel Prize in 2018.

Reviews for Older Brother

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Guven uses contemporary France to examine two related issues many countries are reckoning with today—economic inequality and immigration. He bases his social commentary on the plight of two Muslim brothers living in the banlieues of Paris. The Parisian banlieues exist on the outskirts of the city. One brother describes them as “the dump of France.” Its inhabitants are invisible, living on the socioeconomic margins. They are “less than zeros in a society that teaches about equality and tolerance and respect.”The narrative shifts perspectives between the two unnamed brothers. The more prominent older brother is a former soldier who makes his living as an Uber driver. The younger brother works as a surgical nurse. Both are disaffected and bored with the cards that have been dealt to them. Each is trying to give his life meaning. The older is the more jaded of the two, but beneath his gruff and ironic exterior, he still believes in God and cares about his family, attending mosque, dining with his father on Fridays, and visiting his aged grandmother at her rest home. Also, he is compelled to rescue his brother when he perceives danger. The younger brother is tired of “playing assistant butcher for guys stupider than me, born in a different universe who treated me like Uncle Tom on some Alabama plantation.” He is enticed into going to Syria, not as a radicalized fighter for the caliphate, but as a medical missionary working for a dubious NGO.The plot is a twist on the prodigal son story. The older brother stays home, works and takes care of his widower father, a man with conservative views, who is about to retire as a taxi driver. The younger brother goes off with naïve humanitarian goals, losing contact for three years. Each tells his story in the first person. Neither has satisfying experiences. The older brother hates his entitled passengers while smoking hash, dealing drugs, and working as a police informer. “The slickest of us earn our livings from their misery: sell them the shit and count the cash.” At first, the younger brother resists joining the militants fighting the Assad regime, but eventually succumbs to becoming a bomb expert. The plot accelerates when the younger brother returns but insists on remaining distant from the family and raises suspicions that he may have been radicalized. His brother fears that he may be planning a terrorist attack in the city. Keep in mind that the novel is set following the Charlie Hedbo bombing. The final plot twist is so surprising that one cannot safely discuss it with anyone who has not yet read the book.Guven’s narrative raises many issues marginalized immigrants face in developed countries but provides few explicit solutions. Nonetheless, he effectively uses the older brother’s thoughts and memories to slowly reveal his mindset and backstory. On the other hand, Guven’s treatment of the younger brother’s experiences in Syria are more superficial and cartoonish, leaving out his motivations and many details of what is undoubtedly a humanitarian catastrophe of the highest order.

[runner56_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very informative story that shows to keen outsiders how complex the relationship within families can be and how destructive allegiance to an ideal can prove. Big brother is a taxi driver and everyday he dreams about the direction his life has taken and his inability to go beyond the confines of his metal coffin. Little brother, once a surgeon, now fighting in Syria for a belief he has come to accept as the true way to happiness and fulfillment. What happens when family, ambition, and belief collide is the essence of this wonderful novel. One of the best opening lines I have ever read..." Death is the only true thing, the rest is just a list of details." is followed by many insightful observations..."Muslims were shit, less than zeros in a society that teaches about equality and tolerance and respect"....."And then you just keep going up toward the next summit. It's simple. You just have to breathe a little bit sometimes to catch your breath"....."Life hangs on the word if".....Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for a gratis copy of Older Brother in return for an honest review and that is what I have written. Recommended.