No God But Us
A tale of love and borders—and how they are breached.
30 July 2026
Paperback / 9781914221361
ebook / 9781914221378
288 pages
When Delbar’s double life is outed to his mother, he flees his Afghan American community and takes refuge with his aunt in Istanbul. There he meets another Afghan, Mansur, who has made his own sacrifices to leave his family in Iran and migrate to Turkey.
At an NGO supporting queer and trans refugees, Delbar and Mansur find comfort in each other and the company of new friends. But Turkish state repression is escalating, and as their pathways to security diverge, the fault lines between them become impossible to ignore.
‘I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by a book. Bobuq Sayed’s No God But Us asks what might happen to one's consciousness when it's mangled by the forces of empire. The deeply felt and irreverent story traces two Quixotic journeys through personal pain, faith, exile, and queer self-discovery, all the way from the Afghan refugee community in Tehran to the suburbs of Northern Virginia. At its heart, this is a novel about family—chosen and not—and I am lucky to count this story among my literary kin. This book is simply necessary, and very gorgeous.’
— Aria Aber, author of Good Girl
‘In a powerful debut, Bobuq Sayed reveals how forces of rejection from state and family meet the alchemy of attraction, desire, and belonging. No God But Us not only expands American literature, but also Muslim, gay male, and migration writing. A new kind of novel, with vast geographies of nation and heart.’
— Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity