A novel of considerable interest, steeped in Old-World traditions and New-World realities.
Love—both thwarted and realized—is the main theme of this first novel set in the subculture of Indian Muslims.
Nasr seems to have it all—a successful career in New York City, an active social life and a doting family. According to his mother, however, he’s missing the major component of success—a fiancée—so she goes about rectifying this social inadequacy by arranging a marriage. While Nasr’s good friend Jameela cautions him that “ ‘[d]epth…can’t be assessed visually’” and that Indians are “ ‘susceptible to commodification…the valuation of people as property,’ ” Nasr reluctantly succumbs to his mother’s connubial enthusiasm. With ludicrously high—and sometimes overly critical—standards (candidates are too religious, not religious enough, too Old World, too New World, and so on), Nasr finds himself attracted, and eventually engaged, to the modest and self-effacing Farah, a woman in great contrast to the outspoken Jameela. The world of their engagement, like the larger social and political world, is then disrupted by the traumatic events of September 11. Knowing that Nasr works in New York, friends and family seek him out for his perspective on the destruction of the Twin Towers, though he explains he was in London at the time of the attack. Just at the point when Nasr consciously realizes his strong attraction to the spunky and iconoclastic Jameela, a relationship that’s been developing spontaneously over many years of family friendship, she discovers that her fiancé Javaid is brutally attacked merely for being a Muslim in a post-9/11 world. Javaid responds by deciding rather abruptly to move to Pakistan, which he envisions as a more welcoming environment, but this is obviously a move that would physically separate Nasr and Jameela and make the possibility of further romance difficult, perhaps impossible.
A novel of considerable interest, steeped in Old-World traditions and New-World realities.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-52460-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
