A Booklife Editor's Pick

“An extraordinary thriller of America under a caliphate, alive with jolting detail.” — Booklife (Editor’s Pick)

“Gripping... Riaz’s dystopian setting is richly conceived...A provocative story as dramatically thrilling as it is thoughtful.” — Kirkus Reviews

A decade has passed since the U.S. lost the War on Terror, the Caliphate rules America, and U.S. insurgents are the terrorists...

Jamal Stone is a man of the Caliphate. He is living an uneasy existence in the West State when he receives a video of his now ten-year-old son, Khalil, who has been missing since the age of three. Jamal is relieved to learn his son is alive, but distraught by the circumstance of the video—his son is being groomed by East State insurgents as an adolescent suicide bomber. Jamal must leave his settled life in the West State and travel three thousand miles treacherous to the East State—Washington D.C.—to rescue his son from violent death. An unflinching novel about the War on Terror, Islamic States of America is first and foremost a tender story about a father looking for his lost son.

Hassan Riaz is a writer and physician. His fiction has appeared in The Antioch Review, Slice Magazine, and Fiction on the Web, and he is the author of the medical thriller, The Vaccine. He lives in Los Angeles. Find him at hassanriaz.com.