"American Dervish" - By Ayad Akhtar - Review What a pleasure to encounter a first novel as self-assured and effortlessly told as Ayad Akhtar's "American Dervish." Mr. Akhtar, a first-generation Pakistani-American, has written an immensely entertaining coming-of-age story set during the early 1980s among the Pakistanis in the author's hometown, Milwaukee. Hayat Shah, an impressionable adolescent and the only child of a well-to-do, secular family, finds his comfortable existence upended by the arrival of his mother's childhood friend Mina Ali and her son Imran, who have fled a life of abuse and repression in Pakistan. Mina, a strikingly beautiful woman and a fan of Henry Miller and F. Scott Fitzgerald, captivates Hayat by schooling him in her liberal interpretations of the Koran; she inspires the boy's spiritual awakening at a time that coincides uneasily with his sexual awakening, particularly after Hayat observes Mina fall in love with a well-meaning but deeply naïve Jewish radiologist named Nathan Wolfsohn, who works alongside Hayat's father. Mr. Akhtar's astute observations of the clashes between old world and new, between secular and sacred, among immigrants might seem familiar to readers of both contemporary and classic literature. Strong thematic affinities and plot parallels exist between this work and more than a handful of others - "The Namesake," by Jhumpa Lahiri; "Love Marriage," by V. V. Ganeshananthan; and Pauls Toutonghi's "Red Weather," a 2006 comedy about Latvians in Milwaukee, spring to mind. At times Mr. Akhtar seems also to be putting a modern Muslim spin on earlier stories of Jewish assimilation; his yearning and conflicted young hero suggests a PG-13 version of a Philip Roth character or a more repressed version of Eugene Jerome, Neil Simon's alter ego in "Brighton Beach Memoirs." But what distinguishes Mr. Akhtar's novel is its generosity and its willingness to embrace the contradictions of its memorably idiosyncratic characters and the society they inhabit. The family patriarch, Naveed Shah, is an accomplished and street-smart doctor and a devoted father, despite his penchants for rage, alcohol and philandering. Hayat's mother, Muneer, is a philo-Semitic Freudian psychologist who nevertheless warns her son against ever getting involved with a white woman. Mina, even though she loves Western literature and culture, particularly the TV show "Dallas" and its star Linda Gray, jettisons love in favor of faith. Like the "dervish" of Mr. Akhtar's title - an ascetic who, according to Mina, "gives up everything for Allah" - she ultimately succumbs to an emotionally impoverished existence. Caught between childhood and maturity, between lust and self-abnegation, Hayat himself is a dizzying whirl of paradoxes; he is briefly drawn to the most virulent rants spoken in his community, never mind the fact that, in fourth grade, his best friend was a Jewish boy named Jason Blum, whom Hayat comforted after the boy was besieged by jeering anti-Semites. Mr. Akhtar is particularly adept at depicting the tensions between Jews and Muslims in pre-Sept. 11 America, and he does not shy away from mocking the misogynistic or anti-Semitic beliefs among the more radical Muslims. An influential Milwaukee pharmacist speaks favorably of Hitler, while the imam at the local Islamic Center preaches of the "loathsome" self-love exhibited by the Jewish people. Naveed regards some of the most revered practitioners of Islam as crooks, clowns, and "stooges." "These people are idiots," he tells his friend Dr. Wolfsohn when the doctor's plan to convert to Islam for Mina's sake goes horrifically wrong. Meanwhile a model Islamic youth named Farhaz Hassan, revered by Hayat for his ability to memorize scripture, turns out to be distinctly nonobservant, reminiscent of Tom Sawyer trying to impress Becky Thatcher by pretending to have learned great swaths of biblical verse. Memorizing the Koran, Farhaz announces, was like "drinking castor oil every day for three years." Yet for all the rage and satire contained within its pages, Mr. Akhtar's novel is far from an antireligious screed in the tradition of Christopher Hitchens. It is instead admirably restrained, deeply appreciative of some aspects of Islam and ultimately far more interested in raising provocative questions than in definitively answering them. A flawless work? No, not entirely. Though Mr. Akhtar is a gifted writer, he can occasionally lapse into overly self-conscious or portentous phrasings: "Like the odor of masala lingering along our hallways, the expectation of unhappiness hovered in the air we breathed," he writes at one point. He studied film directing at Columbia University and, during a few dramatic plot twists, the reader can sense him blocking his characters" actions too forcefully. And Mr. Akhtar's climax feels rushed, briefly summarizing dramatic events that might well have benefited from a more leisurely telling. Though "American Dervish" is 357 pages long, those pages fly by, and some added length wouldn't have harmed the narrative. Finally, the novel's coy epilogue hints too obviously at a second installment about how, as an adult, Hayat falls in love with a Jewish woman. "Our wonderful and troubled interfaith romance is a tale for another time," Mr. Akhtar writes. But it is to the author's credit that this reader was left hungering to read that sequel, one, it is hoped, that will prove to be every bit as heartfelt as this charming debut. Adam Langer is the author of a memoir and four novels, including "The Thieves of Manhattan."