A Very Large Expanse of Sea

Born to immigrant parents from Iran, Tahereh Mafi grew up in a small town in Connecticut. Mafi, her parents, and four older brothers later moved to California, where Mafi attended high school and graduated from Soka University of America. In 2011, Mafi published her first novel Shatter Me, a young adult dystopian romantic thriller and the first of seven novels in the Shatter Me series. Published in 2018, A Very Large Expanse of Sea is a standalone contemporary novel, for which Mafi was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Mafi currently lives in California with her husband, writer and filmmaker Ransom Riggs, and their daughter Layla.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists associated with the pan-Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda crashed two American planes into the Twin Towers in New York City and a third plane into the Pentagon. 2,977 people lost their lives, and the United States government launched the War on Terror against militant Islamist organizations including Al-Qaeda. Following 9/11, Islamophobia skyrocketed in the United States as the American government increased surveillance on Muslims and people of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Arab descent, marking them as presumed threats to national security. For example, in November 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft put forth a “Special Registration” program that required all men from a list of Arab and Muslim countries to report to the government and provide their fingerprints. Programs such as these rendered Muslim communities and people of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Arab descent hyper-visible to the American public, resulting in a rise of targeted hate crimes and violence.

Published in 2021, An Emotion of Great Delight is a later novel written by Tahereh Mafi. Like A Very Large Expanse of Sea, this novel features a young hijabi protagonist who must navigate isolation and grief—and unexpected first love—following 9/11. Another book by a Muslim American author that deals with similar themes includes Samira Ahmed’s Love, Hate & Other Filters, which features an Indian American Muslim teen facing Islamophobia, cultural divides, and the pressure to choose a college, all amidst the backdrop of 9/11. Similarly, Laila Sabreen’s You Truly Assumed tells the story of three Black Muslim girls who co-create an online space to counter anti-Muslim sentiments following a terrorist attack. A middle-grade book, Saadia Faruqi’s Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero follows Yusuf as he and his Muslim community brace for the worst on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.