This is the story of Zorah, her family and her life. Zorah is the daughter of Afghani immigrants living in America.
Her father started with little but has gone on to have success in business and become a millionaire.
The whole story is told in a series of interviews with relations, friends, neighbours, and the wider Afghan community in America, including gossip, hypocrisy and rivalry. It's a fresh and interesting way of telling the story, and is really well done, building the tension throughout the book.
Recommended.

The ultimate point-of-view novel. It's designed to be read as a book group or community, and that's really clever.
What you think of the novel will depend upon how enlightened you think you are. Do you hold Western values, do you respect Afghan values? Is Zorah a free spirit, or the ruination of her family's, or is she both? This novel wants you to be judgemental and feel uncomfortable with your judgement. It also wants you to have fun with all the different, really gossipy perspectives and imagine yourself part of that community.

PATMEENA SABIT - GOOD PEOPLE *****
What an engrossing, clever tale. This is the story of a family from Afghanistan who move to America, starting out with rags and, through the hard work of the father, ending up with riches. And the death of their beloved teenage daughter Zorah.
It’s also about the vast difference between Afghan and American cultures and how a teenage girl from one culture gets caught up in the culture of another with tragic consequences. As you read, you understand the different points of view; daughter versus traditional family, rich versus poor; exacerbated by hundreds of differing opinions on social media.
This is such an interesting book. Hundreds of people - friends, neighbours, reporters, lawyers, police, schoolfriends of Zorah - tell the story. You gradually learn and piece together what happened, how the veneer of this devoted family covers something sinister or innocent, depending on who you believe. Your mind changes with each new narrative. Some as brief as a few lines, some as long as a short story.
Each layer reveals something about the family – father, mother, brothers, sisters – and often as much about the people narrating themselves. Somehow the author captures the voices of her schoolfriends as easily as the police or neighbours and each sounds different. A truly remarkable book. Well worth a read.

When young Zorah Sharaf dies in what seems to be a tragic accident, her family are devastated. Afghan immigrants who fled to the USA from the Russian invasion, Zorah’s father has struggled for years to achieve the success and wealth he now has, and she is his pampered princess who has been spoilt and indulged. In her late teens, however, she has started to rebel and to reject the traditional values she has grown up with, bringing shame to her parents and setting tongues wagging in the close-knit Afghan immigrant community where they live. Soon questions are asked about her death, and the media seizes on the story amidst a wave of Islamophobia and prejudice-was this actually an honour killing? This powerful and moving book raises a lot of topical issues- what it is like to be an immigrant, how to live in a society with a very different culture to yours, the need to conform to traditional ways and beliefs while also compromising to fit into a new country. Sabit does a brilliant job of getting the different viewpoints across by telling the story through the testimony of individuals on both sides of the investigation- family friends and neighbours, casual witnesses and eventually activists and campaigners. Authentic and powerful, she really portrays the beliefs, prejudices and assumptions of all those involved. Absorbing and emotional, this is an important and very involving book- a must-read.

Good People is a compelling epistolary novel that tells the story of a wealthy Afghan family in Virginia. It takes the form of a documentary project about a family tragedy, with interviews and news clippings making up the story format - which I really enjoyed. I loved how everything unfurled and kept me guessing - and the ending was ambiguous which felt true to the underlying narrative. I also enjoyed how the "characters" felt nuanced and had their own distinctive voices.

Good People by Patmeena Sabit is an original debut that refuses to offer the reader easy answers. When Zorah Sharaf dies the summer before her senior year, the story begins as one of tragic loss. It then quickly shifts into something more unsettling. Was it an accident? Was it planned? Everyone thinks they know what happened, and who Zorah was, but no one agrees. The ambiguity is the novel’s engine and its brilliance.

Set against the backdrop of a wealthy Afghan refugee family in Northern Virginia, the novel navigates identity, trauma, and public perception. Zorah is portrayed as both her family's pride and their shame, a contradiction that unravels slowly through a chorus of voices that include friends, relatives, classmates, even outsiders who all have their own stake in her story.

What makes Good People stand out is its refusal to resolve the tension it builds. By the final page, there is no definitive answer, no consensus on guilt or innocence. This is not a novel about who did it; it is a novel about what we see when we look at a girl like Zorah, and what that says about us.

Patmeena Sabit has crafted a rare book: a literary mystery that is less concerned with solving a case than with examining the social and emotional fallout around it. It is bold, and damning and it will stay with you long after you've finished.

#littleborwn #virgo #goodpeople #patmeenasabit