Winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award , the CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction and the Bard Fiction Prize

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre

Shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award

Named a best book of the year by Library Journal, LitHub, and Publisher’s Weekly

From a New York Times Writer to Watch, an astonishing debut novel about consumption, family, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers who live above a mosque in New York with their imam father.

Brother Alive is published by Grove Atlantic in the US and UK, and Ultimo Press in Australia. The German edition is published by Kjona Verlag.

“Beguiling debut … A nervy, episodic read … Khalid is such a gifted commentator that his methods bear close examination … [His] sentences abound with florid, poetic metaphors while maintaining the clipped, declarative tempo of Scripture… Brother Alive is Rushdie with none of the ceremony, a searing collage of the profound and the mundane.”—The New York Times Book Review

“One the most exciting debuts in recent years … Khalid’s vision can be bleak, even cynical, but it’s also remarkably cogent and underscored with a profound tenderness … That Khalid executes a novel this intricate, elegant, and compassionate with such masterly prose all but guarantees that this will be one of the finest works of literature this year. Blisteringly intelligent, bursting with profound feeling, and host to some of the most complex, necessary characters in recent memory.”—Library Journal ★

“ [Brother Alive] is thick with ideas, imagination … [The] contradictions make it glow … cynicism is countered by the incredible warmth with which Khalid writes about his city … Youssef, and his author, maintain a sense of delirious wonder throughout. It’s a very New York quality: Every so often, the cynicism falls away and the sentiment—the affection that keeps us in this worn-out city—shines through.”— The Atlantic

“A stunningly ambitious & complex debut ... Most profound is Khalid’s deep exploration of grief … Excels at both the micro & macro aspects of storytelling … A propulsive narrative with lyrical prose that will stay with you long after the last page.”—Toronto Star

“In this auspicious debut, Khalid unfurls a beguiling story involving a Staten Island imam’s secrets … Khalid brilliantly reveals new shades of truth from each character’s point of view, and perfectly integrates the many ideas about capitalism and religious extremism into an enthralling narrative. It’s a tour de force.”—Publishers Weekly ★

“The sentences in Brother Alive present like small, astonishing jewels, and the brilliance of this novel only accrues from there. Brother Alive’s extraordinary writing develops into a propulsive narrative that is a genuine pleasure to follow—one that both surprises and delights. This novel is surreal, complex, puzzling, mind-expanding, imaginative, original, and presciently relevant to our times.”—Judges of the CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction

“This debut is essential reading for anyone who loves great writing. Zain Khalid is a supremely talented writer and his skills with words dazzle on every page of this book ... A novel about family, belonging, sexuality, and the insidious influence of capitalism on daily life, Brother Alive reminded me just how powerful a great novel can be. As I finished it I found myself looking at the world in a more expansive way, and that’s something I’m immensely grateful for.”—BuzzFeed

“Khalid’s writing is lyrical, with the precise vocabulary of a poetry and a surveyor’s eye for details, yet Brother Alive never gets lost in its erudition—the prose is delightful and clear ... Ultimately a work of profound sadness as much as political savvy, Brother Alive is a stunning debut.”—Rain Taxi Review of Books

“A smooth interleaving of science-fiction with high-resolution realism and hallucinatory phantasmagoria … One of those books that appear only seldomly and bellow, from the first page, from the first line, that they require, beyond the valence-judgements expected of a review, earnest, laborious exploration.”—Cleveland Review of Books

“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)

“Zain Khalid’s assured debut novel, Brother Alive, is an impressive feat of literary ambition and intellectual heft … one that marks the arrival of a huge new talent. Khalid is a hugely talented writer, capable of convincing characterisation and disarmingly poetic prose.”—Buzz Magazine (UK)

“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.”—Big Issue (UK)

“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

“Zain Khalid's imagination and talent are a marvel to behold in these pages. Brother Alive bristles with a kinetic, hypnotic energy that also manages to ask profound questions about love, faith, family, and loyalty. Hallucinatory and electrifying, Brother Alive announces the arrival of a writer with an impassioned and fearless vision.”—Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize

“A novel with the polish and warmth of a stone smoothed in the hand after a lifetime of loving worry—original, darkly witty, sometimes bitter, and so very wise. And certainly the debut of a major new writer.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“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

“Brother Alive is 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

“This genre-defying novel, and the intelligence, originality, and awareness of the mind that produced it, astonished me. I was reminded of Günter Grass, of Viet Thanh Nguyen. Through the consciousness of an unforgettable narrator, Youssef, Khalid begins by subtly illuminating the contours of a globalized world in which the personal is geopolitical; he ends by turning up the light and refusing to let us look away.”—Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao

"Brother Alive is a stunning achievement—conceptually daring, endlessly surprising, and rich with moral and intellectual questions that match the beauty of Zain Khalid’s prose and the fullness of his imagination."—NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award judge Jessamine Chan

“Brother Alive is a hallucinatory revelation. With beautifully-written prose, characters that truly leap from the pages, and a rendering of love, both familial and romantic, that made my heart ache, Zain Khalid has announced himself as a writer the world needs to sit up and pay attention to. An exquisitely told, breathtaking, revolutionary book, I barely blinked while reading it and was bereft when I finished it.”—Kasim Ali, author of Good Intentions

In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and share a bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and underserved neighborhoods. The three boys are an inseparable trio, but conspicuous: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean, and Youssef is indeterminately Middle Eastern. Youssef shares everything with his brothers, except for one secret: he sees a hallucinatory double, an imaginary friend who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting familiar he calls Brother. Brother persists as a companion into Youssef’s adult life, supporting him but also stealing his memories and shaking his grip on the world.

The boys’ adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known in the community for his stirring and radical sermons, but at home he often keeps himself to himself, spending his evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, reading poetry, or writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health and the truth about what happened to the boys’ parents. When, years later, Imam Salim’s path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys, now adults, will be forced to follow. There they will be captivated by an opulent, almost futuristic world, a linear city that seems to offer a more sustainable modernity than that of the West. But this conversion has come at a great cost, and Youssef and Brother too will have to decide if they should change to survive or try to mount a defense of their deeply-held beliefs.

Stylistically brilliant, intellectually acute, and deft in its treatment of complex themes, Brother Alive is a remarkable debut by a hugely talented writer that questions the nature of belief, and explores the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.