Order of Laila Lalami Books

Laila Lalami is an author who wrote the American Book Award winning and Pulitzer Prize finalist novel, The Moor’s Account. She is also the author of The Other Americans which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Lalami was born in Rabat and then educated in parts of her life in Morocco, Britain, and the United States. In addition to her novels, she also writes essays that have been published in The Nation, the Washington Post, and the New York TImes. Laila also works as a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside near where she lives in Los Angeles.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Laila Lalami Books, You’ll Love…

• Colson Whitehead
• Ocean Vuong
• Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Moor’s Account is arguably Lalami’s best known work. The book works as the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America. Estebanico as he’s known is Musafa al-Zamori who was a slave for a Spanish conquistador. He sailed to Florida for his master, but a year later there were only four left alive – including Estebanico. As the group travels across America, he finds himself no longer a slave to these men, but an equal.

The Other Americans starts with a Moroccan immigrant living in California named Driss Guerraoui who is hit by a car and killed at night. His death brings together the people from his life to tell their stories. The group is unique as there is his daughter Nora, a jazz composer, his widow, a detective, and an undocumented immigrant who witnessed the crime, but is afraid to come forward. The story unfolds as each tells their story and what happened to Driss is revealed. Everything from family secrets to the town’s hypocrisy to what really happened to Driss will come to light by the end.