Radiant fugitives : a novel / Nawaaz Ahmed.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2021Edition: First hardcover editionDescription: 372 pages ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781640094048
- 1640094040
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
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Dr. James Carlson Library | Fiction | AHMED, NAWAAZ | Available | 33111010671911 | ||||
|
Adult Book
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Main Library | Fiction | AHMED, NAWAAZ | Available | 33111010555049 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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.
"Raised in India, Seema is the beloved daughter of a commanding, erudite, Romantic-poetry-loving doctor father who cut her off when she came out to him as a lesbian. Now living alone in San Francisco, estranged from her African American ex-husband, Seema is one week away from delivering a baby boy, Ishraaq. Ishraaq's arrival has brought to Seema's side, for the first time in 15 years, her terminally ill mother, Nafeesa, and her devoutly religious, hijab-wearing sister Tahera, an ob/gyn living with her husband and two young children in Irving, Texas. But there is to be no easy reconciliation. Instead, this fateful week, narrated by the new-born Ishraaq, ends in an emergency delivery, revealing both a family and a country in distress. The characters confront the complex tensions in their relationships and within their innermost selves, even as their lives are upended by the vandalism of a family mosque in Irving during the lead-up to President Obama's first mid-term elections. Ishraaq must make sense of the broken family and the complicated world that awaits him"-- Provided by publisher.