Customer Reviews

Home Boy: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is simply the best novel I have read in years (and I read a lot of novels). Funnier than Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, more substantive than Shteyngart's Absurdistan, Naqvi achieves a masterly comic prose: witty, intelligent, sensitive, poignant, hilarious, all at the same time.

Naqvi is the shrewdest observer of cosmopolitan urban life that I know, with a unique eye for just the right telling detail. Even as seasoned and celebrated a novelist as Salman Rushdie tried and failed to capture the New York City zeitgeist of the new millenium in his novel Fury, but Naqvi succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly where Rushdie couldn't.

This novel shows how people from all over the world (whether from Pakistan or Senegal or Korea) easily become "New Yorkers" in no time. The plot is compelling and the language is exquisite. Buy it. Read it. And then you'll end up buying many copies for friends, just as I did.

Young Husain Murtaza Naqvi is the, ah, new South Asian writer to watch.

H. M. Naqvi's Home Boy takes the reader to post-9/11 Manhattan through the eyes of Chuck and his two "chums," AC and Jimbo. The three are suddenly wrenched from their bon vivant cosmopolitan lives when they're picked up by the FBI and thrown into a detention center for questioning.

Naqvi's narrative and dialogue are brilliantly rendered, capturing the ethos and ethnicity of the New York experience in tones that for me bring Faulkner to mind rather than Rushdie. Race, religion and tough guy interrogation tactics reveal a coming of age, not only for Chuck and his chums, but everyone in a time when precarious human rights can be dispensed with on the basis of suspicion alone.

By contrast, Naqvi also explores the lifetime bonds of family and friendship. It's a tale of tragedy and laughter, both captured in unforgettable scenes. For instance, the classes and test Chuck has to take before getting his NY cab driver's license after being laid off in the banking business.

H. M. Naqvi is an extraordinary raconteur. His gifts of insight match his gift of gab.

I simply loved this book! It's both entertaining ad touching! A lovely journey through the triumphs and losses of young man finding his way in New York. "Homeboy" ends with the bittersweet strength one finds at the remains of a day marking the end of youth. A novel with heart, "Homeboy" is a must read!

This horribly smart, funny novel is all heart -- with a sliver of ice. You won't know what's been done to you -- or, for you -- until you finish reading, but you'll be riveted all the way. The howling dislocation of being a Pakistani in New York just after 9/11 could not possibly be better rendered, nor could the sea change of that era, the grit that settled forever and made us grow up. This is a work of art that helps to define our times, to answer the nagging question: who are we, really? To do all that, it shouldn't be so much fun to read. But it is. It is.

This book was so good! I first heard the author read at Asia Society and knew this was a book that I would not be able to put down. If you want to get a little taste of this novel go to [...] and click videos and watch Naqvi read. You won't be disappointed. As a native New Yorker I read this book and was simply smiling and cooing at every page. My friends who are not New Yorkers, as we all live in DC, loved the book too. Its a fun read and an adventure tale about three boys who get taken into FBI custody just as the sun comes up on the end of a night on the town. The plot as described here doesn't sound that thrilling. Right? But seriously, its all in the writing. You've got to go to asiasociety.org and listen to the man read. You'll be sold on the book hand down right there!

This is an appealing, smart, funny and sad book, told from the viewpoint of a Pakistani immigrant in New York City. The book follows three young (mid twenties) Pakistani friends, Chuck, AC and Jimbo, who embraced Metropolis for everything they could while indulging in the joys of girlfriends, as well as a little drugs and not-so-little alcohol.

The story is told through the eyes of Chuck, a student on a work visa who turned banker, turned cabbie.
The three friends' world turned upside-down after the events of 9/11/2001 when the city that they thought embraced them, turned hostile. At this time (about 100 pages into the novel) the book becomes very energetic and fast paced as it turns from a story filled with self absorption hedonism into a story about the coming of age in an unfriendly world.

This is one of those books which are disturbing and delightful at the same time, a view point on the events of 9/11 from the perspective of a young man who has been accused of being someone he's not simply out of the national paranoia that gripped the nation.
The book is filled with prose, funny, energetic and filled with local flavors.

I had to read this for a class, and I wish I didn't have to. It's just a vehicle for the author to show off how hip and smart he thinks he is, and the writing style brings the whole book down. It's just annoying to read something written that voice- it personally irritates me. And then he tries to compare his book to The Great Gatsby, which just makes you realize how bad this book is all over again.

HM Naqui is a brilliant new writer. I was entertained from the first page and finished the book in one sitting. Naqui is a great story teller My only grouse with the book is that the theme of Pakistanis getting wrongfully arrested in the US has been beaten to death in movies like "Khuda ke liye" and other books by Pakistani authors.
I look forward to his second book in which I am sure he will explore other themes

Wonderful book. Funny, touching, sad, swinging from New York cosmopolitan life to the aftermath of 9/11. A memoir of a simpler time. I loved it.

This book is brilliant. I could not put it down. The author has a very promising future.