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Fiction Unraveling in America NATIVE BELIEVER By Ali Eteraz 272 pp. Akashic Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo Any society tends to be xenophobic. Outsiders are scanned and tested and permitted entry only upon assuaging the fear (or guilt) of the group. In  Native Believer , Ali Eteraz gives us a character who has been successfully assimilated; so he is led to believe. Set in the first person, our unnamed protagonist starts off as a medium-level ad executive at a medium-level advertising firm in Philadelphia. Eteraz chooses average-to-mundane for all of the settings, including Philadelphia. It’s not New York, not ‘top of the barrel’, but life is good. M (as he refers to himself at one point) embraces the new boss at work, then is fired because the boss finds a Koran in M’s apartment. This duplicity startles both M and his Southern-born wife because they have been studiously non-religious. M was not even aware his mother had placed a Koran on the very top shelf of his bookcase, to be disco...