The back of Patmeena Sabit’s debut novel simply says, “Everyone thinks they know what happened.” And very quickly, you think you do too. Until you don’t. Nothing quite prepares you for the chilling juggernaut of a story that lies within the 383-pager. The New York Times compared its unique form to The Office with its confessional piece-to-camera format, while The New Yorker, just halfway through 2026, is convinced that it’s among the “best books of the year”.
The Nod Book Club’s June pick, the novel circles the story of the Sharaf family, who migrate from Afghanistan to the United States in the late 1990s, initially garnering the pity and consequent charity—but also the judgement—of the small Afghan community they join. Over the years, they attain unimaginable wealth and, in its wake, a different sort of judgement. Rahmat and Maryam came to the West with their daughter Zorah but quickly had two sons and a second little girl. Now, two decades later, tragedy has befallen the family when Zorah is found dead. It’s Zorah and the magnetic combinations of things she is—beautiful, proud, nonchalant, and free—that sit at the centre of the story.
I caught up with the author recently to ask the questions that have been gnawing at me since I turned the last page. She joined me online from Toronto, where she relocated after growing up in Virginia; it’s also where she wrote Good People. In a cosy burgundy jumper against a plain white wall, Sabit is luminous and razor-sharp despite the early hour.
Below, excerpts from the interview (the conversation contains spoilers):
The book is about an Afghan refugee family who emigrate to America, do extremely well for themselves, and then, many years later, things go very wrong. But what actually takes place is kept mostly a mystery, with your book blurbs being intentionally secretive. Was that your idea?
I have to give full credit to my editors who created that sense. They did run it by me, and I also agree with you that that was very well done. Especially now, when I’m coming to interviews and hearing people say they don’t want to ‘spoil’ it for other people. Otherwise, it’s like a movie promo where they show you everything, right? I do believe it’s a book where it’s best to go in blind.
This is a really layered book. How long did it take you to write and how did you conceive of it?
One day I came across an article about an honour crime that had occurred in Canada in Montreal. A little background on that: when I was in college I had written my thesis on honour crimes in Jordan and the attempts of the Jordanian government to address honour-based violence. So, I had a bit of a background in this, but my research for the thesis had been based on crimes in the Middle East and central and south Asia. This was the first time I was reading about a crime like this that had occurred in North America. Just out of curiosity, I began researching other such cases in Canada, the US, Europe, and Australia. I was struck by a couple of things. First was by the xenophobic, sensationalist, Islamophobic media discourse around these crimes, and second by the fact that a lot of the voices that were telling the stories were not voices from the communities where these acts or crimes had taken place. I wanted to explore not the fact of an honour crime but the possibility of one, and to explore the dynamics of how these crimes occur, through the voices of the community. I also wanted to examine the media coverage around them. I didn’t know how to approach the subject, so from start to finish, or from when I put pen to paper, it took 10 years.
How much was the media coverage portrayed in the book informed by actual headlines?
A lot of the articles you read in the second half of the book, particularly about Muslim communities coming under attack, are drawn entirely from headlines. I adapted them, but I did draw from headlines from the US and the UK about attacks on temples, on mosques, on Sikh and other places of worship. It was intentional and it was very important for me to show that this was not something I had made up but that it was drawn from people’s day-to-day lives. I remember reading about these things, particularly post 9/11, and being absolutely appalled. They stayed in my head.
You’ve been very fair throughout the book in examining the varied beliefs of an immigrant Muslim population; how difficult was that? Did you have a sense of betraying the community?
In the first conversation I had with my editor, she asked me, “What do you think the response of the Afghan community is going to be?” And I said, “Well, many people will probably not be happy with the portrayal.” She was a bit surprised by that. The book is new, it’s just out, but I do believe that as time goes by I’ll be getting “feedback”. It was very important for me, though, to offer an unflinching perspective of what kind of dynamic gives rise to these crimes, which can range from domestic violence and forced marriage to isolation, and, yes, can include honour killings. To take a look at that meant not looking away from the ugly. But what was also very important for me—and one character says this in the book that “there are other Afghans here who let their daughters do whatever they want”—that the reader take away that the Afghan community is not a monolith. No immigrant community is. The beliefs explored in the book are those of a very small segment of, in this case, the Afghan population in Virginia, where honour is paramount above all and judgements are extremely harsh.
Did you ever consider using a different structure than the first-person confessional one where we hear a multitude of characters’ points of view?
When I first got down to it, I thought what I would do was present a more linear, conventional narrative where you hear the family’s story, and then the interviews with the community members would be between that. However, two things occurred to me as I began writing. First, because I was writing the story after the fact of the crime or accident (depending on where you stand), the voice of the character who dies, Zorah, would have to be absent from it. To then include the voices of her family—her parents, her brothers, or little sister—felt like a tremendous imbalance. The second thing that happened was that when I went back and looked over the writing, the “interview” sections to me felt more urgent. There was fire between the words, whereas the conventional linear parts felt dull and dead to me. So that’s when I began wondering if the story could simply be told through the voices and views of these secondhand characters.
I did the audiobook as well. I don’t usually do them, but I ended up listening to this one and I have to say it’s fantastic. Was it your idea to have an entire cast read as opposed to a single narrator?
No. Again, I have to give full credit to the team. I’m more than a little bit biased, and like you I don’t usually listen to audiobooks, but with this one I believe they hit it out of the park. And I have to say it wasn’t an easy job. I did not envy them having to put all these actors together. The producer reached out and said, “Could you give me a list of names of characters and put their age range there too?” Because as you know in the book it isn’t specified; there are just some context clues and the reader is meant to make their own judgements. But when I wrote it out, the list of names, it was many pages long and I thought, I do not envy you at all. The casting was perfect, though; they did a really phenomenal job. It was fascinating to me to see how the book translated to that medium. Obviously when you’re writing a book, you’re not thinking of how an audiobook is going to sound, but I’ve heard from a number of readers that it feels like a true-crime documentary. In some ways maybe listening lends itself more to the structure than reading even.
Speaking of true crime, are there any plans for a film or show yet?
We haven’t sold the rights, and I don’t yet know if someone will be interested, but let’s see.
