The Submission - Softcover

Waldman, Amy

3.67

12,822 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443407445 ISBN 13: 9781443407441

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2012

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A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner’s name―and discover he is an American Muslim named Mohammad Khan. Instantly, they are cast into a roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art and the meaning of Islam.

Khan’s fiercest defender is the jury’s sole widow―the self-possessed and mediagenic Claire Burwell. As news of Khan’s selection spreads, Claire finds herself under attack from outraged family members, story-hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians and Khan himself. All will bring the emotional weight of their own histories to bear on the urgent question of how to remember, and understand, a national tragedy.

A striking portrait of a fractured city striving to make itself whole, The Submission is a piercing and resonant novel by an important new talent.

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Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011: Amy Waldman has performed a rare and dangerous feat in writing an airtight, multi-viewed, highly readable post-9/11 novel. When a Muslim architect wins a blind contest to design a Ground Zero Memorial, a city of eleven million people takes notice. Waldman, a former bureau chief for the New York Times, explores a diversity of viewpoints around this fictional event, bringing in politicians, businessmen, journalists, activists, and normal people whose lives--whether by happenstance, choice, or even due to their country of origin--get caught up in the controversy. Incredibly, she manages to keep all the balls in the air without ever fumbling. The story is moving and keeps the pages turning, but there are also bigger themes at work: of individuals versus groups; about the purpose of art, commerce, government, and journalism in society; of how people respond to grief and terror. The result is honest, compelling, and breathtaking.--Chris Schluep

About the Author:

AMY WALDMAN was co-chief of the South Asia bureau of The New York Times and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and at the American Academy in Berlin. Her fiction has appeared in the Boston Review and is anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. She was born in Los Angeles, studied English at Yale, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Follow her on Twitter @amywaldman and become a fan on Facebook.

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