Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    No Land's Man
    Unavailable
    No Land's Man
    Unavailable
    No Land's Man
    Ebook183 pages2 hours

    No Land's Man

    By Aasif Mandvi

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "It always bothered me that Aasif was more than merely funny-he's also a great actor. Now I've learned he's an amazing storyteller as well, and I am furious . . . but also grateful. Aasif's movement between cultures and genres is what makes him and his story singularly funny, poignant, and essential."
    - John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require

    "My father moved our family to the United States because of a word. It was a word whose meaning fascinated him. It was a singularly American word, a fat word, a word that could only be spoken with decadent pride. That word was . . . Brunch! 'The beauty of America,' he would say, 'is they have so much food, that between breakfast and lunch they have to stop and eat again.'" —from "International House of Patel"

    If you're an Indo-Muslim-British-American actor who has spent more time in bars than mosques over the past few decades, turns out it's a little tough to explain who you are or where you are from. In No Land's Man Aasif Mandvi explores this and other conundrums through stories about his family, ambition, desire, and culture that range from dealing with his brunch-obsessed father, to being a high-school-age Michael Jackson impersonator, to joining a Bible study group in order to seduce a nice Christian girl, to improbably becoming America's favorite Muslim/Indian/Arab/Brown/Doctor correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

    This is a book filled with passion, discovery, and humor. Mandvi hilariously and poignantly describes a journey that will resonate with anyone who has had to navigate his or her way in the murky space between lands. Or anyone who really loves brunch.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChronicle Books Digital
    Release dateNov 4, 2014
    ISBN9781452124094
    Unavailable
    No Land's Man

    Related to No Land's Man

    Related ebooks

    Entertainers and the Rich & Famous For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      OVER statements

      Nov 30, 2023

      OVER statements
      6 min read

    • Article

      Allen Zhou

      May 28, 2021

      Allen Zhou
      2 min read

    • Article

      Spirit Lifting

      Jan 28, 2022

      Spirit Lifting
      1 min read

    • Article

      Adventurous. Alone. Attacked.

      Jul 31, 2019

      Adventurous. Alone. Attacked.
      7 min read

    • Article

      Olympic Pride

      Aug 13, 2021

      Olympic Pride
      1 min read

    • Article

      Surf, Swim, Sing: Finding Joy In Lifelong Learning In ‘Beginners’

      Jan 6, 2021

      After seeing his young daughter learn to play chess, travel writer Tom Vanderbilt wondered “Why not me?” So he did – and then learned six more skills.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Class Of Covid-19

      Feb 27, 2021

      Class Of Covid-19
      7 min read

    • Article

      Islands of Competence by Yumi Stynes

      Mar 4, 2021

      I’m bang up for being a bad parent. And by ‘bad’, I guess I mean the kind of parent who puts her own needs first once in a while. Like, “Nah, mate, I won’t do a jigsaw with you.” Or, “I need a nap more than you need me to sit with you to watch TV.”

      2 min read

    • Article

      Q&A GEMMA CHAN

      Sep 16, 2021

      Q&A GEMMA CHAN
      2 min read

    • Article

      Seeing Is Believing

      Aug 27, 2018

      Seeing Is Believing
      11 min read

    • Article

      What To Expect Traveling In A Post-COVID World

      Jul 6, 2021

      Ronit Austgen and her family love taking lengthy annual summer trips and last year planned to visit Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Instead, they went on a five-day biking trip in central California, several hundred miles from their home in San Dieg

      7 min read

    • Article

      David Harewood

      Mar 20, 2023

      David Harewood
      5 min read

    • Article

      Memories O F Chadwick

      Oct 25, 2020

      Memories O F Chadwick
      10 min read

    • Article

      Cup Of Ambition

      Nov 26, 2022

      Cup Of Ambition
      7 min read

    • Article

      Finding PIA

      Oct 19, 2023

      Finding PIA
      7 min read

    • Article

      Salma Hayek

      Apr 3, 2020

      Salma Hayek
      14 min read

    Reviews for No Land's Man

    3.5/5

    42 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Aasif Mandvi is probably most familiar to you as the Senior Muslim Correspondent on The Daily Show. At least that’s how he was most familiar to me. In listening to this book, I discovered that he had a very successful career before The Daily Show, including winning an Obie for his one-man show Sakina’s Restaurant.No Land’s Man is not a humor book per se. It’s a collection of stories from Aasif’s life. Some are definitely funny but some are heartbreaking as well, like the one from his time at an English boarding school. He is a very talented writer and is capable of inspiring a wide gamut of emotions from the listener. The boarding school story almost made me cry. I think the story about starring in a film directed by Ismail Merchant frustrated me as much as it did Aasif. And the story about crashing Brooke Shields’ party made me laugh out loud.The title No Land’s Man comes from the fact that Aasif was born in India, moved to England as a baby and then immigrated with his family to Florida as a teenager. The overriding theme is about Aasif’s search for identity given his wide experience with different cultures. A side note – I was unaware of how much racism brown people experience in England. That part of Aasif’s childhood was definitely hard.Now you are wondering, what about The Daily Show? Does he mention that? Yes, he does. He talks about his path to becoming a regular on The Daily Show and the effect it had on both him and the wider American Muslim community.Aasif narrates his book himself, a wise choice. It’s the same tone he uses on The Daily Show. A little loud and staccato but it works. This is a great book to learn more about Aasif and about what a brown person must go through to become a successful actor in America. At around four and half hours it’s a quick listen and definitely worth your time.
    • 5/5
      [Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com). I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.]There's not a lot to say about Aasif Mandvi's short and sharp memoir No Land's Man, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading; in fact, I found this one of the more delightful short books I've read in recent months, a disarming and always humorous look at one Indian immigrant's journey from the subcontinent to England and eventually America, informed and influenced by Gen-X pop-culture the entire way. For those who only know Mandvi as one of the smartest contributors to Comedy Central's The Daily Show, they might be surprised to know that he has an equal amount of experience in the arts delving into drama and intellectualism, with his one-man play Sakina's Restaurant eventually turned into the successful indie film Today's Special, and with Mandvi taking various parts over the years in plays by Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner and more; and both of these sides of this talented writer and performer are on display in this small but engaging new book, a self-deprecating yet earnest look at Mandvi's youth as a picked-on Indian nerd in a working-class British town, before his family's random move to Tampa, Florida and his '80s dreams of American success as defined through bad television. (One of the funniest chapters here is how Mandvi aspired as a youth to become the next Fonzie, insisting that his parents call him "The Monz" until his mother finally revolted, passionately lecturing him on the superior acting skills of Omar Sharif over Henry Winkler.) A fast and entertaining read that should take most people no more than a day or two to finish, this comes strongly recommended to both comedy fans and those interested in first-hand looks at the American immigration experience, as well as anyone else looking for a sweet, funny story about nerdom and outsider culture.Out of 10: 9.3
    • 3/5
      Looking at a life of someone growing up and being bullied in both England and the States as a child, finally making his way as an actor and comedian.
    • 4/5
      More Interesting in the Aspiring Actor portions in the last halfReview of the Audible Audio edition (2014) of the original Chronicle Books hardcover (2014)[3.5]I first heard of Aasif Mandvi from the recent Audible Original recording of the 2018 revival of his one-man play Sakina's Restaurant (1998). I've also enjoy him as the sceptical myth-buster in the exorcism team of the current TV show Evil (2019-). Audible listed his memoir No Land's Man (2014) as one of its Black Friday Week sales offers and I grabbed it up.The front half is mostly your stereotypical fish out of water tales, boys at boarding schools, youthful lust stories, etc. The last half was more interesting with Mandvi's stories of his struggling actor days, his breakthrough with the original run of Sakina's Restaurant, being recruited for the lead in Ismail Merchant's film The Mystical Masseur(2001) and his hiring and early years on The Daily Show (which I don't see here in Canada).Mandvi's own narration was excellent, although a bit over the top in the youthful exploits sections, which he admits in the afterword were partially fictionalized for comedic effect.