Waiting on Wednesday - The Good Muslim; Tahmima Anam

 Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating! Want to participate? Post your own WOW entry on your blog, and leave your link at Breaking the Spine. Here's my pick for this week.....

The Good Muslim; Tahmima Anam

(Harper - August 1, 2011)

One hot afternoon in a remote Bangladeshi village, a telegram arrives for Maya Haque ...Eight years before, a devastating war tore Maya's country - and her family - apart. Now Maya realises it is time to return home at last. She arrives to find that everything has changed. Her old friends have been seduced by the lure of new money, her city streets have been renamed and the freedom she had once yearned for is a long forgotten dream. Worst of all, her beloved brother Sohail has become a stranger to her, abandoning his liberal beliefs to become a strict religious leader. As she attempts to get to grips with her brother's radicalism, Maya will be forced to rethink what it means to be a good daughter, sister, friend and citizen - and a good Muslim. She must decide where her loyalties ultimately lie. Set in the dusty streets of Dhaka and the villages and river-islands of rural Bangladesh, at a time when the rise of religious fundamentalism was a whisper in the wind, The Good Muslim is an epic, unforgettable story of the challenges of peace in the long shadow of war. It is a novel that cleaves to the simple truths that shape all of our lives: that the bonds of family and love often strain to bear the weight of history.

The author's last book, A Golden Age (2009) was very good.