Anis Shivani picks “The 10 Best Books of 2009” in The Huffington Post:
3. H. M. Naqvi, Home Boy (Crown). Three carefree, young Pakistani men–Chuck (Shehzad), Jimbo (Jamshed Khan), and AC (Ali Chaudhry)–think New York is theirs in the days just before 9/11. Of course their lives fall apart, and of course things can never be put together again. Home Boy is a superior contribution to the genre, its compassionate humor saving it from easy judgment. Naqvi's prose is evocative of Nabokov, in its immense energy; the vitality of the language reflects the immigrant's resourcefulness in standing up to the nightmares of bureaucratic rectitude. The prose creates a new life, an expressiveness not always available to the native-born lazily deploying the proprietary language. It is interesting that both Torsten Krol and H. M. Naqvi have hit on parallel formulas to take down the insanity of America in the present decade, and have left such a treasure trove of illuminating language.
More here.
