PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Radiant Fugitives: A Novel
A family novel about three generations of a Muslim Indian family confronting estrangement, reunion, and the pressures of love and faith.
Work Information
A family novel about three generations of a Muslim Indian fa…
A family novel about three generations of a Muslim Indian family confronting estrangement, reunion, and the pressures of love and faith.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Counterpoint
- Published
- 2022-08-02
- Pages
- 384 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.05 x 2.54 x 20.96 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781640095533
- ISBN-10
- 1640095535
- Price
- 3611 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Women's Fiction/Domestic Life
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR PUBLISHING TRIANGLE'S EDMUND WHITE DEBUT FICTION AWARD In the last weeks of her pregnancy, a Muslim Indian lesbian living in San Francisco receives a visit from her estranged mother and sister that surfaces long held secrets and betrayals in this "sweeping family saga . . . with the beautiful specificity of real lives lived, loved, and fought for" ( Entertainment Weekly ) Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’s attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, traveling alone to California from Chennai, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera, a doctor living in Texas with her husband and children. But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding, and complicated layers of love—a tapestry of emotions as riveting and disparate as the era itself. Told from the point of view of Seema’s child at the moment of his birth, and infused with the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats and verses from the Quran, Radiant Fugitives is a moving tale of a family and a country grappling with acceptance, forgiveness, and enduring love.
NAWAAZ AHMED was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the winner of several Hopwood Awards. He is the recipient of residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, and VCCA. He’s also a Kundiman and Lambda Literary Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
Reviews
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The writer has managed the difficult feat of tackling grand themes while telling an intimate story of totally believable characters in all their humanity. Each of the major characters has their good and not-so-good points but they are all very real and fully human. This would have been a very good book if it stopped at portraying family dynamics. What raises it much higher is its weaving of large evergreen human dilemmas without providing easy answers. Some of the those grand themes are: conservative religious beliefs vs. sexual liberty; the nature of personal identity; impact of larger political events on individual lives and relationships; what we owe our families vs. what we owe ourselves. Best book I have read in a long time!
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I have enjoyed the challenge of this novel, in trying to see into a culture, religion & language so different from my own. I will take a break & read it again hoping for greater understanding.
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I couldn't put it down. The book is stunning in it's descriptions and the story just carries you away to a far far land like a wave in the ocean.
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I started out enjoying this book for its complexity and family dynamics. But I became disappointed at its rambling and preachy tone which led to my forming a true dislike for most of the characters. With the exception of Fiaz, they came across as whiny, self-indulgent, and rigid in their beliefs, and it's difficult to sustain interest in characters that are, ultimately, unlikeable. The political discourse became annoying and did not show any of the characters in an empathetic light, which took away from the large amount of space the discourse took in the book. There are parts of this book that are brilliant, but not enough of them for me to recommend the work to others.