I Will Greet the Sun Again

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley with his two brothers, all K wants is to be “a boy from L.A.,” all American. But K—the youngest, named after a Persian king—knows there’s something different about himself. Like the way he feels about his closest friend, Johnny, a longing that he can’t share with anyone.

At home, K must navigate another confusing identity: that of the dutiful son of Iranian immigrants struggling to make a life for themselves in the United States. He tries to make his mother proud, live up to her ideal of a son. On Friday nights, K attends prayers at the local mosque with Baba, whose violent affections distort K’s understanding of what it means to be a man and how to love.

When Baba takes the three brothers from their mother back to Iran, K finds himself in an ancestral home he barely knows. Returning to the Valley months later, K must piece together who he is, in a world that now feels as foreign to him as the one he left behind.

A stunning, tender novel of identity and belonging, I Will Greet the Sun Again tells the story of a young man lost in his own family, his own country, and his own skin. Staring down the brutality of being a queer kid and a Muslim in America, Khashayar J. Khabushani transforms personal and national pain into an unforgettable and beautifully rendered exploration of youth, love, family—and the stories that make us who we are.