Brother Alive

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Zain Khalid’s first novel, “Brother Alive,” is full to bursting with imagination and literary references…It’s the kind of ambitious debut that might inspire other writers in turn.” — The New York Times , Writers to Watch This Summer Colson Whitehead once wrote that all it took to belong in New York City was an act of remembrance—the summoning of a piece of the city that no longer existed. “You are a New Yorker the first time you say, ‘That used to be Munsey’s’ or ‘That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge,’” he wrote. “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” Whitehead wrote this essay in 2001 and it’s easy to understand why he was reflecting on what was missing: Two towers had left the skyline, and 2,977 people were gone with them. Gorham, Luke (2022-07-01). "Brother Alive". Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-11-27 . Retrieved 2023-11-01.

Haldane's Demand: On Zain Khalid's "Brother Alive" ". Cleveland Review of Books . Retrieved 2023-09-25.The strength of this novel lies in the richness of the language and the intimate portrayal of the characters … Utterly compelling, and a delight to read.”— Herald Sun (Australia) Brother Aliveis a remarkable work. Zain Khalid creates an immersive world rich in compelling detail. But even more impressively, Khalid achieves a kind of resistance text against our endemic inhumanity. The thrill lies in witnessing such a cogent and powerful intellect tune in to the music of life. An inspiring reminder of the great capacity of novels.”— Sergio de la Pava, author of A Naked Singularity

It took the harder sciences a while to come to such a destabilized point, but Kurt Gödel carried them there only a few years after Haldane’s lecture to the Cambridge Heretics. The classic explanation of his incompleteness theorems begins, in the spirit of Kant’s first Critique, with an unanswerable but necessary question: “If the Barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself, who shaves the Barber?” If he shaves himself, he doesn’t; if he doesn’t, then he must. And so any logical system in which this question can be answered is inconsistent. Where it can’t be asked, the system is incomplete. (A simplification, of course, of Gödel’s legendary method, which involved the “Gödelization” of propositions into prime numbers—a method around which I, regrettably, have not wrapped my head and which I cannot explain.) In the final section, we return to the voice of the boy (now man) who narrated the first section. This is where the "rubber band" of my willing suspension of disbelief might snap. Part of the reason for this is that I simply don't know enough about daily life in Saudi Arabia and the different ways in which Islam is/isn't practiced there to be able to separate the accurate from the inaccurate. In Brother Alive, Saudi Arabia depicted in a dystopian manner in some very specific ways. I can easily accept a dystopian view of Saudi Arabia, given its human rights record and the vast disparities in wealth there, but I don't know whether I can accept the particular dystopian version of Saudi Arabia depicted in the final section of Brother Alive. MB The story begins with a “family” —an imam and his three adopted sons— living above a mosque in Staten Island. From where did this premise arise?A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. From here on, then, I will say no more of what the book does well or badly. Rather, I am concerned exclusively with what on earth Khalid is doing, in terms of his book’s interventions within interwoven scientific and philosophical traditions. For it does intervene in both, in ways at once original and potentially impactful, with the right reception; but like any attribution of “originality,” this one will require me to chart the history with which Khalid converses. This exploration, then, begins with an excavation. This wildly ambitious novel seeks to break new ground in big-issue territory like provenance, race, class, birth and rebirth . . . Take note of Zain Khalid’s name.”— Jane Graham, Big Issue (UK)

As the nights warmed and the air became the same temperature as our skin and the sun resisted setting until the moon was in the middle of its shift, Coolidge’s streets thrummed with activity,” he writes. “Rebounds of Wu-Tang, Dipset, and early Drill caromed off parked cars and the deep concrete.” The boys learn that “all parts of a pig are delicious, including the feet,” and enjoy watermelon, curries, flan, and generic-brand cola. Their neighborhood bustles with food and music and people, strangers who can become family.It also features a certain tolerance for things that Islam does not, in fact, usually approve of...even a range of sexual conduct. Brother Alive is a rigorously intelligent, wholly sensitive, and quietly rebellious work of art, with prose as profound as it is beautiful. What an inspiring examination of the waywardness of life and the grounding of love this story is. What a wise, thoughtful writer Zain Khalid is. What a gift to humanity this book is.”— Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times-bestselling author of The Prophets FINALIST for the second annual Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction. Winners were announced on her birthday, 21 October, last year, so might be again this year, but no formal announcement of that was made that I found. Brother is not a hallucination; he’s the incarnation of a condition shared by Youssef and his adoptive father. Salim’s disease is never given a name or manifested as a transforming animal companion, but it also causes him to forget the past. Youssef and Salim clash fiercely, but have plenty in common: Intellectuals and storytellers, they share a fierce distaste for American politics. We are told early on that Salim’s proudest legacy may be successfully encouraging his neighbors and friends not to vote. The novel looks at the lives of three non-biological brothers, born in Saudi Arabia and being raised by a Saudi Imam currently living on Staten Island. It has elements of what may be magical realism—or real and exceptionally uncommon individual experiences. The book's three sections focus on