Our Take

What makes Son of Elsewhere work is that Abdelmahmoud never uses pop culture as mere decoration. Wrestling and teen dramas aren't just entry points into nostalgia—they're the actual tools he used to decode a country that didn't come with instructions. That specificity is what elevates these essays from personal reflection into something more universal: the experience of assembling a self from whatever's available.

The writing moves between registers with real confidence—funny and sharp one moment, genuinely tender the next. Abdelmahmoud has the essayist's essential skill of making his particular experience feel legible to anyone who has ever felt caught between who they were and who a new place required them to become.

Readers who loved A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib or Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner will find familiar pleasures here: the personal essay as a form of cultural excavation, wielded by someone who knows exactly what they're doing. A confident, generous debut.