Laila Lalami – författare

* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 ** A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 *‘A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future’ JENNIFER EGAN‘So cleverly conceived, so relevant, that everyone should read it and sweat’ THE TIMES‘Extraordinary’ RUMAAN ALAM‘Absolutely unputdownable’ SANDRA NEWMANSara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility’s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn't realize the price he will pay for giving up his past...Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape - until, one day, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive, and whisks him from the slums into the luxurious life of Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the poverty of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly un-glittering reality...

When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn't realize the price he will pay for giving up his past...Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, the film stars flickering on the local cinema's screen offer the only glimmer of hope to his frustrated dreams of escape. Until, that is, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive.A high profile businessman with wealth to burn, Nabil is disenchanted with his daughter and eager to take in the boy he never knew. Soon Youssef is installed in his penthouse and sampling the gold-plated luxuries enjoyed by Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the slums of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly un-glittering reality...

**Longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize****Nominated for the 2016 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award**A Pulitzer Prize FinalistA New York Times Notable BookA Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of the YearAn NPR Great Read of 2014A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the YearIn this stunning work of historical fiction, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America—a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés. But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril—navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition’s treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes’s Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquis-tadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers. The Moor’s Account brilliantly captures Estebanico’s voice and vision, giving us an alternate narrative for this famed expedition. As the dramatic chronicle unfolds, we come to understand that, contrary to popular belief, black men played a significant part in New World exploration and Native American men and women were not merely silent witnesses to it. In Laila Lalami’s deft hands, Estebanico’s memoir illuminates the ways in which stories can transmigrate into history, even as storytelling can offer a chance for redemption and survival.From the Hardcover edition.

From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Moor’s Account, here is a timely and powerful novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant—at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant living in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui’s daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she''d left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora''s and an Iraq War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son''s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, messy and unpredictable, is born.

The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor''s Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens."What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, or gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today. Throughout the book, she poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained, keeping the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other. Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together the author''s own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.

Finalist for the National Book Award 2019 An Observer, Literary Review and Time Book of the Year''One of the most affecting novels I have read. Subtle, wise and full of humanity'' The TimesLate one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters, deeply divided by race, religion and class. As the characters tell their stories and the mystery unfolds, Driss''s family is forced to confront its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, in all its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.''A state-of-America family saga told as a slow-burn detective story'' Observer''Exceptionally rich'' Sunday Times''Confirms Lalami''s reputation as one of our most sensitive interrogators, probing at the faultlines in family and the wider world'' Financial Times

Finalist for the National Book Award 2019 An Observer, Literary Review and Time Book of the Year'One of the most affecting novels I have read. Subtle, wise and full of humanity' The TimesLate one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters, deeply divided by race, religion and class. As the characters tell their stories and the mystery unfolds, Driss’s family is forced to confront its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, in all its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.'A state-of-America family saga told as a slow-burn detective story' Observer'Exceptionally rich' Sunday Times'Confirms Lalami's reputation as one of our most sensitive interrogators, probing at the faultlines in family and the wider world' Financial Times

* Winner of the American Book Award * Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015 * A Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction *'An absorbing story' SALMAN RUSHDIE'Rich, vivid and gripping' GUARDIAN'Feels at once historical and contemporary' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWIn 1527, hundreds of settlers arrived on the coast of modern-day Florida and claimed the region for Spain. Within a year of navigational errors, disease, starvation and fierce resistance from indigenous tribes, only four survivors remained. Three were nobleman, whose stories found their way into the official record. The fourth was known only as Estebanico, a vibrant merchant from Barbary forced into slavery and a new name, reborn as the first African explorer of the Americas. This is his story: a journey across the great swathes of the New World, where would-be conquerors are transformed into humble servants, fearful outcasts into healers, and the silenced into storytellers.

* Winner of the American Book Award * Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015 * A Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction *''An absorbing story'' SALMAN RUSHDIE''Rich, vivid and gripping'' GUARDIAN''Feels at once historical and contemporary'' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWIn 1527, hundreds of settlers arrived on the coast of modern-day Florida and claimed the region for Spain. Within a year of navigational errors, disease, starvation and fierce resistance from indigenous tribes, only four survivors remained. Three were nobleman, whose stories found their way into the official record. The fourth was known only as Estebanico, a vibrant merchant from Barbary forced into slavery and a new name, reborn as the first African explorer of the Americas. This is his story: a journey across the great swathes of the New World, where would-be conquerors are transformed into humble servants, fearful outcasts into healers, and the silenced into storytellers.

* Winner of the American Book Award * Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015 * A Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction *''An absorbing story'' SALMAN RUSHDIE''Rich, vivid and gripping'' GUARDIAN''Feels at once historical and contemporary'' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWIn 1527, hundreds of settlers arrived on the coast of modern-day Florida and claimed the region for Spain. Within a year of navigational errors, disease, starvation and fierce resistance from indigenous tribes, only four survivors remained. Three were nobleman, whose stories found their way into the official record. The fourth was known only as Estebanico, a vibrant merchant from Barbary forced into slavery and a new name, reborn as the first African explorer of the Americas. This is his story: a journey across the great swathes of the New World, where would-be conquerors are transformed into humble servants, fearful outcasts into healers, and the silenced into storytellers.

* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 ** A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 *‘A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future’ JENNIFER EGAN‘So cleverly conceived, so relevant, that everyone should read it and sweat’ THE TIMES‘Extraordinary’ RUMAAN ALAM‘Absolutely unputdownable’ SANDRA NEWMANSara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility’s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 ** A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 *Sara is at the airport, travelling home from a work conference. Out of nowhere she’s pulled aside by agents from the Risk Assessment Administration. Their algorithm has determined that she’s an immediate threat to her husband, and must be kept under observation at a retention centre for twenty-one days.The evidence? Data collected from her dreams.When she arrives at the centre, she discovers that each deviation from their strict and ever-changing rules – loitering in the hallway, a ‘non-compliant hairstyle’ – results in her stay being extended. Desperate to return to her family, Sara must make a choice. Does she play by their rules, or risk taking matters into her own hands?

* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 ** A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 *''A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future'' JENNIFER EGAN''So cleverly conceived, so relevant, that everyone should read it and sweat'' THE TIMES''Extraordinary'' RUMAAN ALAM''Absolutely unputdownable'' SANDRA NEWMANSara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility''s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 ** A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 *''A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future'' JENNIFER EGAN''So cleverly conceived, so relevant, that everyone should read it and sweat'' THE TIMES''Extraordinary'' RUMAAN ALAM''Absolutely unputdownable'' SANDRA NEWMANSara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility''s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.