A Shondaland's "Best Books for May 2022" * A Pop Sugar "New Book That Is A Must Reads in 2022" —
"Jameela Green Ruins Everything" by Zarqa Nawaz is a deliciously dark comedy that takes on America's foreign policy in the Middle East, the lengths people are willing to go to for success, and one woman's search for meaning." — Popsugar
“A satire about ISIS is a big swing to take—but Zarqa Nawaz knows a thing or two about taking chances. Jameela Green Ruins Everything may be her first foray into the world of fiction, but Nawaz has made a career of being a trailblazer. . . . The book manages to weave American foreign policy and thwarting a terrorist organization with one woman’s search for faith, meaning and redemption.” — Chatelaine
“Nawaz’s understated humour shines in this lovely comedy of errors—and faith.” — Maclean’s
“International politics is personal in this brilliant satire from the always provocative—and deeply funny—mind of Zarqa Nawaz.” — Rick Mercer
“A breezy dark comedy about serious contemporary issues." — Quill and Quire
“Zarqa Nawaz is a comic genius who has done the impossible in this brilliant fiction debut: Jameela Green Ruins Everything is, all at once, an incisive examination of recent Middle East history, a biting indictment of Western imperialism, and a darkly comic satire on terrorism. Follow Jameela Green, the comic she-ro for our modern times, as she bumbles through the unimaginable on this hilarious whirlwind adventure. I guarantee you will never think about the phrase ‘East meets West’ in quite the same way again. Three cheers for Jameela Green!” — Uzma Jalaluddin, author of Ayesha at Last and Hana Khan Carries On
“Zarqa Nawaz is one of the few writers around who can deftly navigate that minefield between high-stakes, war-torn, geopolitical upheaval, and one woman’s hilarious but meaningful journey to find her place in her family and community. Is it a searing satire on America’s war on terror, or a side-splitting family adventure? Well . . . yes, it is, and a crazy ride, too. Funny, moving, brilliant.” — Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
“Finally, an action plot featuring a middle-class Muslim mom from North Dakota! Zarqa Nawaz makes ample room for her protagonist, Jameela Green, to be a multidimensional woman of color who flexes between a flawed insecure instigator to a championing hero in one humor-filled international ride.” — Pooja Reddy, comedian and cohost of Kutti Gang
“Jameela Green Ruins Everything is zany, daring, and hilarious, and exactly the type of novel we’d expect from Zarqa Nawaz, creator of CBC’s award-winning sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie. . . . the story is a wild and humorous one—Zarqa’s use of comedy is gutsy as hell. . . . The result is a satirical masterpiece that few on earth would dare to do.” — shedoesthecity.com
“A comedy of errors about an ordinary Muslim woman thrust into a high-stakes international crisis. It’s also a tale of internal struggle, interspersed with characters’ private prayers to God. . . . provocative and cheeky.” — Maclean’s
“What I love about this biting satire is the initially unlikeable main character Jameela, who is messy and selfish and unapologetic—rare for a Muslim, South Asian female character, who are most often portrayed as submissive victims or perfect model minorities. But then, Nawaz has always been ahead of her time (full disclosure, she is a friend).” — Uzma Jalaluddin, Toronto Star
“This black comedy explores the price of success and one woman’s search for meaning — Chatelaine
“[A] biting yet warm-hearted satire from the Regina-based creator of the groundbreaking CBC sitcom Little Mosque On The Prairie [that] somehow . . . manages to interrogate everything from prejudice to foreign policy to what it means to be a ‘good person.’” — TheKit.ca
“Canadians are funny people—that’s a given—and when our special brand of humour is coupled with the skill of a writer like Zarqa Nawaz, creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, brilliant things happen.” — Canadian Living
“Jameela Green Ruins Everything will keep you laughing all the way to the end. A heartwarming story of faith, family, and friendship that is only amplified by Zarqa Nawaz’s sharp and brilliant wit. All the sacred cows are skewered—what you are left with at the end is the power, beauty, and humour of one woman’s journey back to faith.” — Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of A Deadly Divide
“Nawaz writes about religion and faith in an easily digestible way.” — The Canadian Press
Jameela Green Ruins Everything is zany, daring, and hilarious, and exactly the type of novel we’d expect from Zarqa Nawaz, creator of CBC’s award-winning sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie. . . . the story is a wild and humorous one—Zarqa’s use of comedy is gutsy as hell. . . . The result is a satirical masterpiece that few on earth would dare to do.”
International politics is personal in this brilliant satire from the always provocative—and deeply funny—mind of Zarqa Nawaz.”
Zarqa Nawaz is a comic genius who has done the impossible in this brilliant fiction debut: Jameela Green Ruins Everything is, all at once, an incisive examination of recent Middle East history, a biting indictment of Western imperialism, and a darkly comic satire on terrorism. Follow Jameela Green, the comic she-ro for our modern times, as she bumbles through the unimaginable on this hilarious whirlwind adventure. I guarantee you will never think about the phrase ‘East meets West’ in quite the same way again. Three cheers for Jameela Green!”
A satire about ISIS is a big swing to take—but Zarqa Nawaz knows a thing or two about taking chances. Jameela Green Ruins Everything may be her first foray into the world of fiction, but Nawaz has made a career of being a trailblazer. . . . The book manages to weave American foreign policy and thwarting a terrorist organization with one woman’s search for faith, meaning and redemption.”
Nawaz’s understated humour shines in this lovely comedy of errors—and faith.”
Zarqa Nawaz is one of the few writers around who can deftly navigate that minefield between high-stakes, war-torn, geopolitical upheaval, and one woman’s hilarious but meaningful journey to find her place in her family and community. Is it a searing satire on America’s war on terror, or a side-splitting family adventure? Well . . . yes, it is, and a crazy ride, too. Funny, moving, brilliant.”
[A] biting yet warm-hearted satire from the Regina-based creator of the groundbreaking CBC sitcom Little Mosque On The Prairie [that] somehow . . . manages to interrogate everything from prejudice to foreign policy to what it means to be a ‘good person.’
A satire about ISIS is a big swing to take—but Zarqa Nawaz knows a thing or two about taking chances. Jameela Green Ruins Everything may be her first foray into the world of fiction, but Nawaz has made a career of being a trailblazer. . . . The book manages to weave American foreign policy and thwarting a terrorist organization with one woman’s search for faith, meaning and redemption.”
★ 09/01/2022
The debut novel by Nawaz (filmmaker of Little Mosque on the Prairie and author of the memoir Laughing All the Way to the Mosque) is a biting satire about struggling writer Jameela Green. All Jameela wants is to see her memoir on the New York Times best-sellers list. Listeners will travel along as she seeks out this goal, entangling herself in a string of increasingly ridiculous scenarios, each more hilarious than the last. Listeners will be happy to join her on her unintended path to spiritual enlightenment. Jameela is a wonderfully imperfect, ridiculously sarcastic human, who leaves a path of emotional destruction in her wake (the likes of which hasn't been seen since the last Godzilla flick), all under the guise of "doing good." Listeners who love dark comedy with lots of cultural satire will love Nawaz's witty writing, which is brought to life by narrator Aizzah Fatima, who brings gusto to an already entertaining story and juxtaposes spot-on comedic timing with serious topics. VERDICT This constantly surprising, thought-provoking novel is highly recommend for anyone interested in quirky heroines, cultural politics, or satire.—Anna Clark
10/01/2021
Following some attention-getting short stories, Ali's Good Intentions features a young British Pakistani man named Nur who must break it to his family on New Year's Eve that the woman he truly loves isn't Pakistani but Black (60,000-copy first printing). Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Banwo's When We Were Birds brings together Yejide, raised in a Port Angeles house built on the remains of a plantation whose owners enslaved her ancestors and left unprepared by her mother for her task in life—ferrying the city's souls into the afterlife—and Darwin, who must disregard the religious commandments of his true-believing Rastafarian mother and accept the only job he can find: that of grave digger. Stuck on her dissertation about the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou, Taiwanese American Ingrid Yang follows down a mysterious archival reference in Chou's Disorientation and ends up acknowledging her anger with academia and white institutions generally. Following up Clark's own questions about the children of victims of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, On a Night of a Thousand Stars features Paloma, an Argentine diplomat's college-age daughter, whose probing questions about her father's involvement in the military dictatorship put her family, her sense of self, and her very life in danger (30,000-copy first printing). In Friedman's Here Lies, climate change-mauled 2040s Louisiana requires cremation rather than burial at death, and Alma fights to reclaim her mother's ashes for a final journey. Cofounder of the Lit Camp Writers Conference, Kravetz reimagines events surrounding the composition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., which are related from the perspectives of Plath's psychiatrist, a nasty rival poet, and a curator years later (100,000-copy first printing). A Canadian film and television producer (she's responsible for the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie), Nawaz crafts the story of a feckless young woman whose new imam expects better of her, and though there's the risk that Jameela Green Ruins Everything, she is on the case in an absurdist sort of way when he disappears. In Ronan's Chevy's in the Hole, a white man struggling to kick his drug habit and a Black woman working as an urban farmer try to make a go of it together in Flint, MI, as the water is becoming poisoned, with family histories woven in (50,000-copy first printing). In Stringfellow's Memphis, ten-year-old Joan flees her father's violence with her mother and sister to the house built in the historic Black district of Memphis by her grandfather, who was lynched only days after becoming the city's first Black detective.
2022-03-16
A woman makes a deal with God to make her memoir a bestseller—and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.
Jameela Green is excited for her publicity tour…until her high school nemesis shows up and steals her thunder. It seems like these sorts of things are always happening in her life, so for the first time in more than 20 years, Jameela ventures to her local mosque in Liverspot, North Dakota. There, she meets Ibrahim, an earnest imam who recommends that she try to help someone else before she expects God’s help in return—specifically, he says that she should reach out to a homeless person. Thus, Ibrahim and Jameela encounter Barkley—who, it turns out, has been radicalized by an IS–type group known as the Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdom, which will conveniently be referred to as the DICK throughout the rest of the novel. And DICK jokes really are the tip of the iceberg. Soon, Ibrahim is detained by the CIA, suspected of associations with the DICK, and when Jameela tries to help him, she ends up in Pakistan, tasked with infiltrating the DICK, which has been looking for a Western-raised Muslim woman to commit a terrorist act. Along the way, she commits murder and is promised in marriage to the DICK’s second-in-command, who has a fetish for women eating cookies, while Ibrahim’s CIA contact—also his fake wife, as a cover—turns out to be the daughter of the DICK’s leader. They all end up in Syria along with Jameela’s White husband and their daughter, where they are part of the strangest wedding ever staged. There is little subtlety in this farcical novel, but the over-the-top satire still wields a sharp edge, particularly when it comes to commentary on American involvement in the Middle East.
Jameela wins us over with her sharp tongue, boundless courage, and sterling insight.
