Category Archives: British Asian
Author Interview: Tahmima Anam
In spite of the fierce, wrenching content of her books, Tahmima Anam in real life is a gentle, warm, incredibly youthful presence. We met in livetime a few years ago in Washington, DC, as her debut novel, A Golden Age, was winning major international awards, including the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Recognizing the literary stardom to come, Anam was the earliest invitee to the Smithsonian Institution’s 2008 South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival [SALTAF], an annual public program of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program (my then-day job that came with serendipitous literary perks for sure). By the time Anam landed in DC from London almost 11 months after that initial invite, she had earned some well-deserved, hefty accolades.
Tahmima Anam’s impressive debut, A Golden Age, is the first of a trilogy set in Bangladesh, before, during, and after the War of Independence that ended in 1971 with the birth of Bangladesh as a new nation separate from Pakistan. Anam’s first protagonist is Rehana Haque, who while still mourning the sudden loss of her too-young husband, loses custody of her young son and daughter to a scheming brother-in-law. Separated for a year with her children faraway in Lahore while she remains in Dhaka, Rehana – in spite of what seems to be the impossible trap of young widowhood without a clear means of support – manages to reunite with her children out of sheer will, determined she will never lose them again. In 1971 when the people of Bangladesh declare independence from Pakistan, Rehana is no longer certain how she can protect her children during a horrific time marked by betrayal and terror. But neither will she remain a silent bystander while civil war threatens to destroy her family, friends, and adopted country.
From Rehana, Anam shifts her focus to the Haque children in The Good Muslim, the second book of her Bengal Trilogy which debuts this month. For the first time since the war, Rehana, her son Sohail, and daughter Maya are under the same roof … and yet their physical reunion is overshadowed by emotional disconnection. Sohail’s wife has just passed away when Maya returns home, leaving behind shocking violence in the small village where she was a doctor for several years. She is tired and spent, having witnessed the too-often subjugation of women just for being women. She can’t comprehend Sohail’s new religious fervor since his return from the war, his reinvention as a revered Muslim leader, nor his unbending rules and expectations in the name of a god that Maya can’t accept as absolute. Sohail’s devotion to his faith leaves him blind to his utterly neglected son – a frail young boy, unwashed, clothed in tatters, thieving, lying, and yet the only request he voices regularly is to be able to go to school. Bypassing her brother’s objections, Maya tries to at least provide her nephew with a basic literacy, but her attempts at enlightenment have tragic consequences.
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975, currently domiciled in London, Anam’s writerly strength is driven by a sharply observant imagination that allows her to recreate a time before she was born, before she had access to her memory. Surely her international upbringing in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok – thanks to her father’s peripatetic UN career – instilled in her a broad understanding of humanity in diverse situations. Her privileged education – undergrad at Mount Holyoke, PhD in social anthropology at Harvard (yes, that’s Dr. Anam!) – made sure that xenophobia was never even a glimmering possibility in her questioning mind.
Catching up this time via phone lines strung under the Pond from DC to London, Anam was as soft-spoken as ever. That she spoke about war, corruption, imprisonment, and even rape, rarely changed her firm but even tone. She was also sure to balance the tragedy with joyful moments of family, love, and even someday-children. As expected, her ability to explicate and engage made an hour-plus pass all too quickly …
This year, Bangladesh is celebrating its 40th birthday. You were born four years later, and have now lived through much of your country’s tumultuous history, the vast changes, improvements, and challenges. What are some of your immediate thoughts about your birth country during this celebratory time?
I feel it’s a mixed bag. The good news is the incredible progress that has been made in major areas: we’ve been a functioning democracy for the last 20 years after a tumultuous period of martial law and army rule. The world of micro-credit founded by Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank has changed so many people’s lives, especially among the very poor. The fact that 95% of the borrowers are women means many improvements for women especially. Through microcredit and state investment in girls’ education, women are becoming economically powerful. They’re sending their daughters to school, they’re managing their homes, and taking jobs. Bangladesh has a strong feminist movement; women are advocating for legal changes to the constitution for more equitable rights.
In addition to the progress, I’m aware of a lot of problems, especially the threat of climate change. In spite of being a democracy, our government has a top-down political power structure. The people suffer because of corruption.
We need more democracy, less corruption. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Tahmima Anam,” Bookslut.com, August 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
Tahmima Anam continues her outstanding Bengal Trilogy, which began with A Golden Age, her glowing 2008 debut that propelled Anam into a privileged literary circle filled with international accolades. From Rehana Haque, the protagonist mother in Age, Anam shifts her focus to the grown Haque children in her second book which hits U.S. shelves in just a couple of weeks.
For the first time since the Bangladesh war of independence finally ended, Rehana, her son Sohail, and daughter Maya are all under the same roof … and yet their physical reunion is overshadowed by emotional disconnection. Sohail’s wife has just passed away when Maya returns home, leaving behind shocking violence in the small village where she was a doctor for several years. Maya is tired and spent, having witnessed the too-often subjugation of women just for being women.
Maya can’t comprehend Sohail’s new religious fervor since his return from the war, his reinvention as a revered Muslim leader, nor his unbending rules and expectations in the name of a god that Maya can’t accept as absolute. Sohail’s devotion to his faith leaves him blind to his utterly neglected son – a thin young boy, unwashed, clothed in tatters, thieving, lying, and yet the only request he voices regularly is to be able to go to school. Bypassing her brother’s objections, Maya tries to at least provide her nephew with basic literacy, but her attempts at enlightenment have tragic consequences.
As Bangladesh celebrates 40 years of independent country-hood, Anam’s intimate, vivid new title appears just in time as both testimony of endured brutality, and a reminder of the difficult choices survivors faced once the violence finally subsided. That survival always comes with a price: Sohail’s search for redemption takes him in one extreme direction, while Maya chooses a very different path. And Rehana – her silences more telling perhaps than her words can be – watches as her children’s lives diverge further and further from one another, and eventually from hers as well.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
The Story of Lee (vol. 1) by Seán Michael Wilson and Chie Kutsuwada
The greatest strength of this series debut is, without a doubt, the art: the first spread, for example, captures the eponymous Lee gliding along on her bike, then the shock of a narrowly-missed collision with an elderly woman, and the embarrassed apology as she picks up her scattered belongings. The story, however, is another matter … but you can be the judge in this case.
Lee is 24, working for her father in the family’s small grocery store in Hong Kong. She dreams of British punk bands and overseas adventures while her father keeps pushing her to date Wang, a young man of his choice, and settle down to a secure future.
But then Lee meets a Matt, a handsome blond foreigner from Edinburgh who comes in to use the copy machine to duplicate his poems. Sparks fly. Lee’s father is hardly supportive so Lee has to sneak out when she can. Cultural differences (no surprise) threaten to keep the lovebirds apart, but Lee’s worldly uncle arrives deus ex machina-style and saves her future …
In spite of the predictable events, the story definitely has some sweet moments: Lee’s relationship with her frail grandmother, her easy-going bond with her widowed uncle. But here’s where that predictability causes an eyeball to roll: of course, Matt turns out to be an Asiaphile, but Lee actually falls for lines like “Girls in this part of the world are number one … I’m constantly amazed by how good-looking they are. It’s not fair on the rest of the world! He he …”
Do I really even need to add any further comments?
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Author Interview: Xinran
People, even complete strangers, feel compelled to tell Xinran their personal stories, from the simple happiness of sweet everyday lives to the most horrific memories of shocking abuse. Something in her soothing voice, the wordless encouragement to keep talking, exudes a sense of undeniable comfort of being heard, of being truly understood. Her very essence gently says, “Tell me more; I am here to listen.”
Xinran has built a remarkable career by listening carefully, and always with the greatest empathy. She had an audience of faithful millions as a journalist in her native China when she hosted a nightly radio called Words on the Night Breeze. The show debuted in 1989 on Radio Nanjing and ran for seven years. As the first show in China to give voice to the personal issues of women, Xinran received hundreds of calls and letters every day; women from all walks of life poured out their stories of incest, rape, kidnapping, brutality, suffering, torture, and neglect. Xinran often wept.
Eight years later, in 1997, she moved from China to London, and took those stories with her. She felt she had been entrusted with these women’s lives, so much so that she risked her own when she was mugged on her way home from her London University teaching job. She struggled desperately with her attacker, refusing to give up her bag, which contained her only copy of a manuscript that would become her debut title, The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices. She refused to let these women sink into obscurity without a fight to the death.
When I first interviewed Xinran almost a decade ago, she was on her U.S. tour for Women. By the time she hit American shores in 2002, Women was already a major international bestseller, published in 50 countries and 27 languages. As with just about everyone lucky enough to meet her, I felt an instant connection, buoyed by the serendipity of a shared geographical proximity. At the time, Xinran lived around the corner, literally a stone’s throw, from what had been my last London address years earlier; she could see the same familiar stretch of the Thames, she walked the same streets, took the same underpass to the High Street, she ate and drank in the same neighborhood restaurants. So warm and intimate was our first conversation that I felt we were practically related by the time we finished our long conversation.
How blessed I’ve been to share small portions of Xinran’s life since. In between a staggering world travel schedule of countless talks, presentations, projects, and conferences, Xinran has graciously allowed me more interviews; together, we’ve grabbed hurried cups of hotel caffeine and enjoyed a few lingering meals (ever nurturing, Xinran picks out the best tasty morsels to place on her companion’s plate!), and of course, I’ve never missed any of her books.
Over the last nine years, strangers, colleagues, and friends alike have continued to entrust some of their most heartfelt experiences into her literary care. With her signature honesty and deep respect – not to mention her warm patience – Xinran has ushered those stories into bestselling, illuminating titles. She followed Women with Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet about a young Chinese doctor’s three-decade search for her missing husband, published Stateside in 2005.
In 2006, Xinran’s regular cultural column for The Guardian, one London’s leading newspapers, was compiled and published as What the Chinese Don’t Eat. Her first (and thus far only) fiction title, Miss Chopsticks, about three village girls trying to navigate their labyrinthine new lives in the big city, hit British and European shelves in 2008. Back on both sides of the Pond in 2009, China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation was an ambitious, rich tome filled with unforgettable stories from the survivors of China’s tumultuous past century. “This book is a testament to the dignity of modern Chinese lives,” Xinran’s introduction begins.
Each of Xinran’s titles have been tenacious extensions of her life’s work: to acknowledge and preserve the disappearing stories of ordinary, everyday people who have managed to survive extraordinary experiences. What was missing was Xinran’s own … until now… and still just a glimpse, but what a heartbreaking, compelling, unforgettable moment of her life she shares in her latest title, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love, finally available in the U.S. this month.
Her single children’s book published in 2007, Motherbridge of Love, hinted at what was coming. That poem of love was originally submitted anonymously by an adoptive mother to Xinran’s charity, Mothers’ Bridge of Love, a London-based group Xinran founded in 2004 that reaches out to adopted Chinese children around the world. The book celebrates the adopted child who is deeply rooted in love, who bridges two mothers, two cultures, two lives.
The wondrous Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is by far her most personal. That I read Message in full on Mother’s Day last year was truly a gift. Contained in these 200+ pages are heartbreaking stories of Chinese mothers longing for the daughters they lost, either forced by cultural expectations to ‘do’ away with newborns, or to give up for another mother to nurture, hold, and love. Regardless of that loss, the ultimate message is clear: a mother/child bond remains forever unbreakable. [ ... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Xinran,” Bookslut.com, February 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love by Xinran, translated by Nicky Harman
Okay, so I’m not quite sure of the U.S. publication date for Xinran’s latest … but I’ve been oh so blessed with a copy and must announce that it’s not to be missed, especially if your life has been touched by adoption in any way. Amazon does have a few copies available through their related sellers on their U.S. site, so you can definitely order now with the UK cover … That I read Message in full on Mother’s Day was truly a gift.
The strength of Message – as with most of Xinran’s books – is her uncanny ability to get people to share stories they have never revealed before. Contained in these too-brief 200+ pages are heartbreaking stories of Chinese mothers longing for the daughters they lost, either forced by cultural expectations to ‘do’ away with newborns, or to give up for another mother to nurture, hold, and love. Regardless of that loss, the final message is clear: a mother/child bond remains forever unbreakable.
Xinran opens Message with valuable context: the 120,000 Chinese children adopted in 27 countries by 2007; the historical, cultural, and political reasons as to why and how these orphan children, mostly girls, have found mothers and families outside of China; and her own 2004 founding of a UK charity, The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, which provides cultural resources for all Chinese children, especially Chinese children in Western families, and helps support disabled Chinese orphans languishing in Chinese orphanages. She offers a brief overview of her own story, from her longing to “‘[t]o be a daughter’” to her estranged mother, and the mother-love she has both witnessed and experienced from strangers who have embraced her throughout her around-the-world tours.
For those Chinese daughters – and the few sons – who begin to question, “‘Why didn’t my Chinese mummy want me?’” Xinran offers irrefutable proof that every one of those let-go children were deeply loved, but unavoidable circumstances tore the child from the birthmother. Through memorable, human stories, Xinran introduces a mother who calls herself “Waiter’ – as in one who waits for her lost child, a retired midwife whose practices were forced to adapt according to the newborn’s gender, a village transplant to the big city who thinks suicide is the only way to end the pain of losing her daughters, and an ‘extra-birth guerilla family’ who chooses a life on the run in the hope of producing that all-important son in spite of the rigid one-child law.
She meets an elderly woman, Red Mary, herself an orphan, who for long decades single-handedly tried to better the lives of Chinese orphans; through that connection, Xinran later meets Red Mary’s successor, Green Mary, who confesses that she gave up her own daughter believing she would find a better life in the West. Xinran meets a chic Chinese American immigrant in New York who reveals that she has never stopped searching for the firstborn daughter she was forced to give away for her parents’ sake. She recalls a young mother who never stops feeding stones to the river where her daughter was kidnapped, and a teenage girl who learns that she was a kidnapped baby.
The final story belongs to Xinran herself, as she remembers her own foster daughter whom she was not able to keep forever, whose distinctive pink birthmark she searches for in the faces of the thousands of young women she meets all around the globe, hoping someday she might hold that missing daughter in her arms once more …
From page to page, story, to story, Xinran remembers just the right details – the stone and leaf, the piece of checkered cloth – that make you catch your breath and shed longing tears. Each of these messages are true testimony to a mother’s love … and a most tremendous gift for adopted children asking the most difficult questions, waiting for impossible answers.
Click here for Xinran’s other titles available on BookDragon.
Click here if you’re interested in reading my 2003 or 2005 interviews with Xinran …
Tidbit: May 13, 2010 – just found out that the U.S. pub date is currently scheduled for March 2011 from Scribner. But again, you can get copies from Amazon’s related sellers now.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 (United Kingdom) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, British Asian, Chinese
Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
Five years ago, Taipei-born Malaysian British Tash Aw landed in the media spotlight with The Harmony Silk Factory, complete with public speculations about an allegedly enormous debut advance. Decorated with multiple important prizes, including Commonwealth and Whitbread first novel awards, Aw’s Factory earned him both fortune and fame.
Last May, Aw’s sophomore effort, Map of the Invisible World, arrived on British shelves, but took another eight months to cross the Pond. Without a doubt, as lauded as Aw’s debut was, Map is even better.
At its core, Map is a story about a family in search of home. Set mostly in Indonesia in 1964 during a tumultuous “Vivere Pericoloso … Year of Living Dangerously” as named by then-President Sukarno in his Indonesian Independence Day speech, the two-member de Willigen family comprised of father Karl and son Adam is torn apart by race and politics.
Although Indonesia declared independence in August 1945 after centuries of Dutch colonialism followed by Japanese occupation during World War II, the Netherlands did not acknowledge Indonesia’s sovereignty until 1949. Decades of turbulent transition followed for Indonesia’s citizens – both native and naturalized.
Born on a remote Indonesian island to Dutch parents, Karl desperately wishes (and almost believes) that he was his hired wet-nurse’s half-Indonesian son. His need to belong to the only home he’s ever known manifests in his longing for an Indonesian family: “’I want to have an Indonesian child. A boy. He’ll be my alter ego, except better, and happier.’”
Years later, Karl’s adoption of five-year-old native orphan Adam completes the de Willigen family. But for Adam, a new father means he must acknowledge he has forever lost his only other family, an older brother Johan he “cannot remember the slightest thing about … not even his face.”
“’My name is Adam and I have no surname,’” he used to announce to detach himself, but he eventually accepts that his “Present Life” permanently includes Karl. In their idyllic house by the sea on the “lost island” of Nusa Perdo, he settles into his new identity as Adam de Willigen, which “sounds just right.”
Refusing to acknowledge the growing xenophobia, Karl and Adam are caught unawares when Karl becomes one of thousands of Dutch Indonesians rounded up for forceful expulsion. One day, soldiers simply take Karl away – “no violence, hardly any drama” – as 16-year-old Adam helplessly watches.
Ten days later, Adam tracks down Margaret Bates, an Indonesian-born, U.S.-national, university professor long domiciled in Jakarta. Hers is the only name he finds repeated in his father’s personal papers and photos. “’I wasn’t prying, you understand, I was just looking for clues. I need to find my father,’” he explains to a bewildered Margaret.
And thus the search begins. Driven by decades-old memories of her 15-year-old-self, Margaret calls on an overly-complacent Australian journalist friend and an untrustworthy U.S. Embassy official in her desperate quest to find Karl – whom she finally admits to be her long lost love.
In the big city for the first time, Adam falls victim to Margaret’s enigmatic graduate student, Din, who hopes to one day write “a secret history of the Indonesian Islands … a history of our country written by an Indonesian.” His militant patriotism both repulses and fascinates wide-eyed Adam, while his promises to help Adam find his brother Johan lead the teenager towards grave danger.
With controlled elegance, Aw lays out a multi-layered puzzle whose pieces create a haunting portrait of a splintered family working towards reunion. The militant Din tells Margaret of his visions of a “lost world where everything remained true and authentic, away from the gaze of foreigners – a kind of invisible world, almost.” Din unmistakably refers to an Indonesia untouched, certainly uncontrolled by western colonialism.
Ironically, Din’s ‘lost world’ points specifically to the southeastern Indonesian islands, which include Buru where Karl was born, and the fictional Perdo where Karl has chosen to build his adult home. Only in Din’s lost world – which Karl refers to again and again as “paradise” – can Karl and Adam be ‘true and authentic’ as father and son. But their Edenic existence proves fleeting, and both Karl and Adam are separately cast out.
“Home was not necessarily where you were born, or even where you grew up, but something else entirely, something fragile that could exist anywhere in the world.” For Adam, home must be with Karl, with new hopes of being joined someday by Johan and even Margaret. To get there, these unlikely individuals must move beyond history, politics, skin color, barriers, and background … and find their way together, somewhere on that map of the invisible world.
Review: The Bloomsbury Review, Spring 2010
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, British Asian, Malaysian
Half Life by Roopa Farooki
I don’t know why the galley’s back cover touts “shades of Slumdog Millionaire and The Namesake” because this book has no overlaps with either of those titles, much less their authors, or even locations! Really, not all brown people look alike – authors or their characters! Slumdog (based on the even-better than-film book Q&A) is a Mumbai story by an Indian diplomat now based in South Africa. Namesake (with the film version better than the original book) is about an immigrant Indian family and their American-born son by a Brooklyn-based Indian American.
And don’t even get me started on the cover – it represents no one in the book, much less any situation within the book’s pages!
All that superfluous stuff aside, once you get about 30 pages or so into Half Life to familiarize yourself with the three alternating voices, you’ll probably not be able to put it down. Roopa Farooki, a Pakistani-born, London-reared, Oxford-educated, southeast UK/southwest France-domiciled author of three previous novels, follows a pair of lost lovers and a father from London to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, with memory stops throughout the South Asian subcontinent.
“It’s time to stop fighting, and go home,” Aruna reads in a poetry collection one morning partway through breakfast in her London flat. And that’s exactly what she does. With only her purse and passport in hand – at least she changed out of her sleepwear – she leaves her house keys, her too-adoring doctor husband of a year who has already left for work, and their London flat that was never a home. She heads to Heathrow in a daze and boards a plane to Singapore. On the other side awaits her past – Jazz, her childhood best friend and lover since adolescence, the first person she left without a word. Meanwhile, in a Kuala Lumpur hospital, Jazz’s elderly father Hassan desperately awaits his son’s forgiveness for untold secrets so he can finally be free of his painful life.
Together, Aruna and Jazz must figure out who they are, especially who they are to each other. While she’s managed to wean herself from the harder drugs, Aruna’s addictive habits keep her not quite balancing on the right side of alcoholic smoker and sex addict; self-medication is clearly not working. Jazz has shut down his own heart, squandering his literary talents and churning out one exotic-setting, happy-ending romance after another. His father, a lauded poet, is fighting his failing body, hoping to stay alive just long enough to tell his son the truth of his relationship with his son’s late mother. With so many swirling secrets, you’ll probably guess one or two along the way … but don’t get too comfortable, because Farooki is very adept at turning your expectations upside down yet again …
Half Life debuts in May, so hopefully the galley’s back page at the very least proves to be just a temporary marker and the publishing-powers will realize Farooki’s original work can very-well-thank-you-very-much stand all on its own.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, British Asian, Pakistani, South Asian
Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie
First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie’s second novel: ‘bugaboo.’ “It’s a word that demands to be said out loud,” writes Shamsie, “particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to ‘baghal boo’ or ‘armpit odour’, but its meaning ‘object of baseless terror’ makes it misleading in this conversation.” I have to add – isn’t it so ironic that those trendy, overdesigned, overpriced but greatly colored strollers of the same name, Bugaboo, translate into ‘objects of baseless terror,’ much less ‘armpit odour’? I just couldn’t stop laughing …
Bugaboo is also at the center of this complicated extended family tale that ultimately proves to be a simple love story. Aliya, a Pakistani elite on her way home to Karachi via a cousin-visiting stopover in London from her American university, meets a young man in-flight and eventually comes to realize that he just might be Prince Charming. But because un-royal Cal, who is actually Khaleel, is of a family that is hardly comparable to Aliya’s venerable, aristocratic, timeless Dard-e-Dil clan, he becomes Aliya’s bugaboo … at least until the novel’s final page.
In between, Shamsie writes cleverly of the memorable, entertaining, frustrating Dard-e-Dil ancestors (a much-needed family tree precedes even the first page in the novel!), with Aliya being the supreme storyteller who is not quite certain of her own story. Aliya must make peace with her estranged grandmother, her missing aunt who is also her “almost-twin,” her British sort-of aunt and cousin, before she can finally allow herself to let that bugaboo-baseless terror go and receive true love, even if it originates from the wrong neighborhood, the wrong family, but seemingly the right man …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2000 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, British Asian, Pakistani, South Asian
The Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda
Being a so-called ‘normal’ teenager for hapa Pakistani Londoner Bilqis SanGreal has never been an option. With an overbearing father who happens to be the Templar Master – even if many believe he murdered his beloved wife – Billi’s destiny as the newest, youngest Knight is unavoidable. Under Arthur SanGreal’s iron leadership, the ragtag group of Knights must continue the timeless battle between good and evil, fighting off the Unholy from destroying mankind.
When Billi passes her horrific Ordeal, she’s finally in. But having survived her most challenging physical attack ever doesn’t mean she’s able to keep her emotions under tight control: her growing frustration with her seemingly uncaring father and the sudden return of her once best friend Kay whose newly honed powers only seem to set him further apart leads her to literally fall for a dark stranger in the middle of the night. She should have known so much better! Now everyone’s souls – especially those of firstborn children – are in grave danger and Billi must fight for ultimate salvation any way she can. Go, girl, go!
In spite of the mostly Christianity-inspired good vs. evil themes, first-time novelist Chadda does an admirable job uniting all the various major religions to fight against the ultimate inhumanity. And that’s certainly a welcome achievement when manmade death and destruction happens far too often in the name of God.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2009 (United States) Continue reading
Broken Verses: A Novel by Kamila Shamsie
I’m getting on the Shamsie-bandwagon a little late … and backwards, not surprisingly. Since she’s coming to the Smithsonian this fall for SALTAF 2009 (and might I repeat how thrilled we are!), I figured I better finish her titles before she gets here!
Like her latest, Burnt Shadows, Broken Verses is another multi-layered book. Aasmaani is a sad, lost young woman, still searching for elusive answers about her life, about her family, as she enters her 30s. Her mother, Samina, who was quite possibly Pakistan’s greatest feminist activist, disappeared 14 years ago without a trace, much less a farewell note of any kind for her abandoned daughter. Two years previous, Samina’s lover, known by most as simply ‘The Poet’ because of his heart-stopping literary prowess, was reportedly tortured and murdered by the unstable government.
Aasmaani’s leftover family – father, stepmother, and sister – as beloved as they are, cannot keep her lonely suffering away. Then most unexpectedly, Samina’s best friend Shehnaz, a legendary actress about to make her filmic comeback, presents Aasmaani with a puzzling note, written in the secret code that Samina and the Poet shared. Shehnaz’s mysterious son, recently returned from NYC post-9/11, plays the enigmatic messenger. Against all logic, Aasmaani begins to believe that the Poet might be alive, perhaps even her mother, as well. And so the unrelenting quest begins …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2005 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, British Asian, Pakistani, South Asian
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