American Dervish  American Dervish is a 2012 novel by Ayad Akhtar. The novel tells the story of a young Pakistani-American boy growing up in the American Midwest and his struggle with his identity and religion. The novel has been published in English, Italian ("La donna che mi insegnò il respiro"), Norwegian ("Begynnelsen på et farvel"), Dutch ("De hemelverdiener"), Danish ("Tavshedens smerte") and Spanish ("El aroma secreto del limón y las especias"). The book will be released in 17 more languages by the end of 2012. Author Ayad Akthar was raised in the Brookfield suburb of Milwaukee like his main character Hayat. As an adult, he often wondered how the lives of the women he had known in his childhood were affected by their faith. He decided to explore the idea through the novel: "My sense of the polarities at play for the Muslim women I saw in my childhood is a good part of what makes up the central story of "American Dervish". In it, the brilliant and beautiful Mina Ali emigrates to America to rebuild her life after a terrible marriage and ugly divorce back in Pakistan. In America, living with her best friend’s family, she transforms the lives of all she encounters. She is imbued with a spiritual force, the book’s most powerful and inspiring agent of change. And yet she is a paradox: deeply devout, bound by her tradition, subject—in tragic ways—to a patriarchal order with which she struggles. In my novel, this is an unresolved tension, and one that I believe reflects a much larger picture, and one in which not only Muslims find themselves today." Inspired by authors like Herman Melville and Toni Morrison who use biblical references in their novels, he included passages from the Quran in his text. Akhtar finished the novel in 2010 and sent it to various publishing companies. Little, Brown and Company bought the manuscript for a six-figure sum the day after they received it. Hayat Shah, a young Pakistani American, lives in a boring suburb of Milwaukee with his unhappily married parents who are secular Muslims. His mother's best friend Mina and her son Imran come from Pakistan to stay with the family, escaping her ex-husband who threatens to take away Imran. Mina brightens the lives of the Shah family, becoming especially close with Hayat, telling him Sufi stories and teaching him the Quran.