“The near east has told its stories in voice and song since before the time of Babylon, relentless chants across sand flats and roofs in a constant re-tuning of what it means to be a coward or a hero, forsaken or godly. This 21st-century God's-eye view of post-war Iraq rocks the same tradition. Only Townes Van Zandt, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Glen Campbell riding in on camels might've told it this way. A true original.” —DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little
"The Muslim Cowboy is unlike any story I’ve ever read. Yates’s prose is strange and hypnotic, and with it, he delivers a landscape terrifying in its bleak beauty. These characters are deceptively simple in their needs: survival, friendship, and the search for meaning amid the rubble of war. But the journey they undertake is a messy parable. The cowboy hopes he can abandon his humanity and with it, the pain of his survival, but his young companion, by only the nature of her existence and her need for him, guides him back to himself. This novel is a treasure. A reminder of what really matters, and a treatise on longing and belonging in a broken world. It will stay with me." —Jeanine Cummins
In the aftermath of the Iraq war, an odd Iraqi man entranced by Americana and old Western movies dresses in double denim and roams a lawless landscape in search of his own Western story. Amidst the disorder he meets a young girl, and together they set out across the tank strewn desert on his trusty camel to find safety. Written with a simplicity of direction that captivates like a film, The Muslim Cowboy is an extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity, the struggle to reconcile conflicting values, and sacrifice as that great virtue we all must embrace in order to find meaning and purpose in a world of chaos.