Brother Alive

By Zain Khalid

In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in Staten Island. The boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are so close as to be almost inseparable. Nevertheless, Youssef is keeping a secret from his brothers: he has an imaginary double, a familiar who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother.

The boys' adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. But he is uncharismatic at home, a distant father who spends evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his nighttime excursions from the house and the truth about what happened to the boys' parents. When Imam Salim's path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys will be forced to follow. There they will be captivated by an opulent, almost futuristic world and find traces of their parents' stories. But they will have to change if they want to survive in this new world, and the arrival of a creature as powerful as Brother will not go unnoticed.

With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel - family, capital, power, sexuality and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press UK
• Release date: Aug 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781611858709

Reviews for Brother Alive

[muddyboy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a hamster wheel of a novel - the characters are going around in circles with very little happening. Three step brothers are being raised by an unrelated man in New York. What links them is their mutual Muslim faith. The main character has an imaginary companion (Brother) who is always there. Eventually the three make their way to Saudi Arabia to work on a futuristic city. What they do there is never fully defined. Some will see this book as "art" but I see it as a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.