A deeply compelling and funny coming-of-age novel about a teenaged girl's life-changing journey from Pakistan to America, and the challenges of a debilitating illness.

On a year-long exchange programme in rural Oregon, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama. An unforgettably witty narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad; a first kiss, new friends, racism, Islamophobia, homesickness. Along the way Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell until she begins coughing up blood, and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her newly-established world upside down.