About this item
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 winners name - and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. The memorials designer is Mohammad Khan, an enigmatic, ambitious architect. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the mediagenic Claire Burwell. But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, Claire finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself.
About the Author
Amy Waldman turned to fiction writing after fifteen years as a journalist, and she has published two novels: A Door in the Earth and The Submission, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Debut Fiction award and was named #1 book of the year by Entertainment Weekly and Esquire. She was a reporter for The New York Times for eight years, including three as co-chief of the South Asia bureau. The territory she covered included Afghanistan, where A Door in the Earth is set. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the American Academy in Berlin. Her fiction has appeared in the Boston Review and the Atlantic and was anthologized in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2010. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives with her husband and nine-year-old twins in Brooklyn.
