An Emotion of Great Delight

Set in 2003, against the backdrop of a new war in Iraq and the lingering suspicion aimed at Muslim Americans after 9/11, the story follows Shadi, an Iranian American teenager whose name means joy but whose life has filled with sorrow.

Her brother is dead, her father is gravely ill, her mother is unraveling under grief, and her closest friend has inexplicably cut her out. On top of it all, Shadi is nursing a broken heart over Ali, the older brother of that former best friend, Zahra.

Trained by circumstance to swallow her pain, Shadi soldiers through her days saying nothing, retreating further inside herself as the world around her keeps cracking, until the silence she has imposed on herself finally gives way.

Moving between past and present, the novel traces how a young woman carries faith, family duty, racism, and private heartbreak all at once, and what it costs to keep absorbing them alone.

Intimate and emotionally raw, it is a portrait of a single Muslim family in the wake of loss, of a daughter of immigrants forging an uncertain identity, and of the fragile, stubborn hope that can surface even at the lowest point.