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“In the summer of 2012, when I was twenty-three, I bought the cheapest one-way ticket to continental Europe that I could find.”

From Aatif Rashid, author of Foreword Indies Winner Portrait of Sebastian Khan, comes a new novel about youth set in the now-nostalgic world of European backpacker hostels. Art history student Amir Rahim, unhappy with his life and uncertain about his future, decides to spend two months traveling Europe. What follows is an odyssey of pleasure seeking and self-discovery, with Amir drifting from city to city, staying at youth hostels and cheap hotels, going to museums and cafes, drinking at bars, hooking up with strangers, and meeting others as lost as he is. Ultimately, as he struggles with his own sense of purpose and what he feels is the profound ugliness of the modern world, Amir finds himself asking the age-old burning question: how does one live a meaningful life?

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A 2019 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER

“Witty and dissolute.” — Foreword Reviews

“A smart, thoughtfully constructed, and propulsive coming-of-age novel.” — J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Rashid gives us the chance to look at millennials in a different light.” — Atticus Review

“…[a] startling coming of age story.” — Necessary Fiction

Sebastian Khan is 380 days away from the end of college. An art history major with a fondness for the Pre-Raphaelites and a dislike of long-term commitments (romantic and otherwise), Sebastian starts dating Fatima, who’s determined to transition smoothly from campus life to a stable white-collar professional career. Sebastian’s membership in Model United Nations, though, takes him to colleges across North America, foisting upon him all manner of temptations and testing his commitment to Fatima and his readiness for adulthood.

Part satire of college life circa 2011 and part serious exploration of art’s fundamental unreality, Portrait of Sebastian Khan is a humorous coming-of-age novel about a charismatic but emotionally stunted Muslim American Don Draper, who wins as many hearts as he breaks.