Join the South Asia Book Award for the first of three webinars in their 2023 Meet the Authors Series! Participants will be entered to win one of 20 available copies of Dur e Aziz Amna’s book, American Fever. Sign up for the other two webinars in the series here.
About American Fever
On a year-long exchange program in rural Oregon, a Pakistani student, sixteen-year-old Hira, must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and try to understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama. A skeptically witty narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad; a first kiss, new friends, racism, Islamophobia, homesickness. Along the way Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell until she begins coughing up blood, and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her newly established home away from home upside down.
American Fever is a compelling and laugh-out-loud funny novel about adolescence, family, otherness, religion, the push-and-pull of home. It marks the entrance on the international literary scene of the brilliant fresh voice of Dur e Aziz Amna.
About the Author
Dur e Aziz Amna grew up in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and now lives in New Jersey, USA. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Longreads, among others. She won the 2019 Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize, with an e-book publication by Penguin, and was longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2020. She graduated from Yale College and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. AMERICAN FEVER is her debut novel.
About the South Asia Book Award
The South Asia Book Award, administered by the South Asia National Outreach Consortium, is given annually for up to three outstanding works of literature, from picture books to young adult novels, which accurately and skillfully portray the experience of individuals living in South Asia, or of South Asians living in other parts of the world. Honor Books and Highly Commended Books will also be recognized by the award committee for their contribution to this body of literature on the region. See all past winners, as well as educational resources, on our website: https://southasiabookaward.wisc.edu/
