Good Muslim Boy

Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences … despite his best-laid plans to be a Good Muslim Boy By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran–Iraq War, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed temporary marriage’ not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police for trying to hold hands with girls in dark cinemas. And the trouble didn’t stop when Osamah emigrated to Australia. As much as he tried to be a Good Muslim Boy—his father was the lead cleric in Melbourne, after all—life was short and there were beaches with girls in bikinis to skip school for, a medical degree to fake because the son of a cleric should become a doctor, and an arranged marriage to run away from because his heart belonged to someone else. Good Muslim Boy is a hilarious and heartbreaking memoir of love, loss and family. It’s about what we’ll do to live up to expectations—and what we must do to live with ourselves. “The fact that these events are true beggars belief ... We need someone in the world to be our yardstick, a benchmark by which we may assess our own gaffes and shortcomings. Osamah is our man.” Andrew Knight, creator of SeaChange