A deeply compelling and funny coming-of-age novel about a teenaged girl's life-changing journey from Pakistan to America, and the challenges of a debilitating illness.
'A subversive debut' GUARDIAN
'Prose that dances with charge and potency' LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS *WINNER of a 2023 ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE and a 2023 SOUTH ASIA BOOK AWARD*
On a year-long exchange programme, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap the bustle of urban Pakistan for church and volleyball practice in rural Oregon.
Stuck between two worlds, her experience of America is sometimes freeing, sometimes painful, often quite painful. And while she faces racism and Islamophobia, she also makes new friends and has her first kiss.
But when her new life is blown apart by a shocking health crisis, Hira's sense of belonging is overturned once again - forcing her to consider her place in the world.
'Marks the debut of a thrilling new global voice' Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes
Marks the debut of a thrilling new global voice. - Peter Ho Davies
American Fever is the unforgettable story of a teenage girl in a year of transformation. Dur e Aziz Amna navigates the choppy waters of adolescence with blistering insight and humour, and exquisitely captures the way we can long for home while yearning to escape it. Rarely does a book sharpen how you see the world around you, but American Fever does just that. It dazzled me on every page
Dur e Aziz Amna is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program, where drafts of AMERICAN FEVER won the Hopwood and Busch Prizes. She won the Bodley Head / Financial Times Essay Prize and the London Magazine Short Story Competition and has been longlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. Her writing has been featured or shortlisted elsewhere, including the New York Times, Longreads, Roads & Kingdoms, and Dawn. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and children.