Good People by Patmeena Sabit
Published by Crown
Publication date: February 3, 2026
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Fiction, Cultural, Mystery
Bookshop
When the Sharaf family emigrated from Afghanistan to the United States in the 1980s they were met by an Afghan community that understood not only the terrors of war they’d escaped, but the hardships they would face in building a new life in a foreign country. They were welcomed and aided in their early years of extreme poverty. It’s startling then that when tragedy befalls the family decades later this community turns on them. In Patmeena Sabit’s debut novel, Good People not only has the tide of goodwill towards the family shifted, but these people are the ones who tell the story in a series of interviews that make up the novel’s core.
Even amongst his friends Rahmat Sharaf is known as a difficult man. He rejected all advice from others in his pursuit of wealth, yet still managed to attain riches that would lift him, his wife, and their four children high above the heads of other Afghanis. His family personifies the American Dream with the best of everything and for his children—no limits, especially his oldest daughter, Zorah. A bright girl with an even brighter future. How then did she end up at the center of a sordid tragedy that blackened the family’s name and honor costing them everything?
Good People opens with the accusatory chatter of Sharaf family friends who castigate the parents for the shameless behavior of their teenage children and how they flout the tenets of Islam, bringing shame on all Afghanis. They peck and pick like vultures over a corpse in interview after interview about Zorah’s indecency. But just as the case against her seems sealed, her friends chime in with descriptions of a different Zorah—a young woman trying to balance between the opposing worlds of her parents’ strict Islamic faith and today’s youth culture. The two versions are unrecognizable and are the beginning of Sabit’s forcing the reader to adjust, pivot, and reassess what exactly was happening with this family. When the Sharaf’s situation spreads beyond their community and the media arrives gossip starts being overlaid with facts, spawning a mystery that outweighs petty generational and cultural differences.
By peppering Good People with the slang and idioms of Afghanistan Sabit immerses the reader into Middle Eastern culture, replete with its cultural biases and defenses. What begins as a family tragedy is fanned by the flames of racism and religious intolerance on both sides until it’s an international inferno. The ashes left behind reveal a deeper and more insidious rot that crosses religious and cultural lines. But what is most telling in Good People is that amidst all this noise the key characters are silent. Without a word they say more about the truth in this propulsive mystery than anyone in the crowds around them.
This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).
*I received a free copy of this book from Crown Books in exchange for an honest review.*
Curious how you rated this book.
You can see my star rating directly below the book cover.
Thank you. I can see the ratings on my computer, but when I looked on my phone, it didn’t show. I’m listening to this book now and enjoying it.
Oh no, that’s not good! Thanks for sharing, I’ll need to fix that.
This sounds intense … and I’m on the library wait list for it. I’m not sure yet what the plot fully entails but it reminds me of an honor killing case years ago that took place in Ontario. Perhaps it’s influenced by that disturbing case. It creeped me out.
It will grip you.