Fatima Farheen Mirza Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Fatima Farheen Mirza is an American bestselling author best known for her debut novel A Place for Us published in 2018. She was born in 1991 in California. Her parents are of an Indian decent where her mother grew up in Birmingham, and her father from Hyderabad. She has schooled and graduated from the Iowa writer’s workshop from where she taught teaching –writing fellow. She is also is a recipient of the popular Michener-Copernicus fellowship.

Fatima is one of the youngest and performing writers where her writing has been hugely praised and used as an encouragement to many young writers. She is an icon to many upcoming writers in her age bracket to dare out and work on their writing.

A Place For Us

A Place For Us is Fatima Farheen Mirza debut novel published by SJP for Hogarth. This is a hugely moving story of identity, love and a sense of belonging. She touches on family, love and the aspect of religion in a land that scares people who seem different from their kind on the elements of religion, beliefs and skin color.

An Indian-Muslim family has gathered in their hometown, California for a simple wedding. To them, it is just a celebration of love more than the diverse traditions that they both come from as they have a different culture than the land that they currently live. It is during the wedding of the eldest daughter, Hadia at the same time having a family reunion with one of their youngest siblings Amar who has been away for three years. Their parents Rafiq and Layla are staunch upholders of their traditions which in the past have not worked that well for the two and their children.

Their children are trying to create a balance between authenticities to themselves and also maintain their loyalty to their home of decent. This is a story that goes back in time on the lives of each member characterizing the things that did bring them together and those that set them apart. Hadia, Amar, and Huda are trying to set their own lives by creating an experience that suits them without being overly dependent on one side. It is a struggle for these three as they try creating a balance of cultures that to some extents does not agree with their parents. This has created a rift in the past as they decided to come up with a life that respected their old cultures and still accommodated the current world.

Every decision made has a consequence, and each of the slightest mistakes can lead to a considerable load of betray and family differences. While their parents try emphasizing on their sticking to their traditions, their children are after ensuring that they strike a balanced life to get accommodated in their current environment. This is a problem for the three as they try convincing their parents that they can manage to uphold their traditions and still accommodate contemporary society.

The book reflects the choices that one has to make for themselves despite the ones that are being forced on them by other individuals such as family members. The characters in the story create a picture of a bold generation that chooses not to remain in the past but instead proceed to the future through the making of decisions that are accommodating to them irrespective of how the society and family to take their choices.

The book enlightens the readers on the struggles that an individual goes through as they try balancing tradition, religion with the modernization present in America. One can almost feel the struggles that they face psychological as they try to absorb and use all these diversity as one person. Her honesty is one that helps see the more profound efforts that families such as the one in this story have to go through daily. At the same time, family love can be seen deep inside their actions despite the differences that come in on the aspects of culture and religion.

Fatima Farheen Mirza has not pieced together a collection of words but rather a reality of truths written honestly to make the reader feel every loving connection, possibility, pain, struggle, misunderstanding, and heartbreak. The lessons that the story emphasizes are overwhelming and unforgettable to the reader emphasizing on the importance of decisions and judging the characters and lifestyles of others more so on a family scale.