The Submission [Hardcover]

'Amy Waldman's THE SUBMISSION is a wrenching panoramic novel about the politics of grief in the wake of 9/11. From the aeries of municipal government and social power to the wolfpack cynicism of the press, to the everyday lives of the most invisible of illegal immigrants and all the families that were left behind, Waldman captures a wildly diverse city wrestling with itself in the face of a shared trauma like no other in its history.' --Richard Price

'Amy Waldman writes like a possessed angel. She also has the emotional smarts to write a story about Islam in America that fearlessly lasers through all our hallucinatory politics with elegant concision. This is no dull and worthy saga; it's a literary breakthrough that reads fast and breaks your heart.' --Lorraine Adams

'In her magnetizing first novel, replete with searing insights and exquisite metaphors, Waldman, formerly a NEW YORK TIMES reporter and co-chief of the South Asia bureau, maps shadowy psychological terrain and a vast social minefield as conflicted men and women confront life-and-death moral quandaries within the glare and din of a media carnival. Waldman brilliantly delineates the legacy of 9/11; the confluence of art, religion, and politics; the plexus between the individual and the group; and the glory of transcendent empathy in THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES for our time.' --Booklist, starred review

'Waldman imagines a toxic brew of bigotry in conflict with idealism in this frighteningly plausible and tightly wound account of what might happen if a Muslim architect had won a contest to design a memorial at the World Trade Center site ... Waldman keenly focuses on political and social variables ... As misguided outrage flows from all corners, Waldman addresses with a refreshing frankness thorny moral questions and ethical ironies without resorting to breathless hyperbole.' --Publisher's Weekly, starred review

`With a keen and expert eye of an excellent journalist, Waldman provides telling portraits of all the drama's major players, deftly exposing their foibles and mutual; manipulations. And she has a sense of humour: the novel is punctuated with darkly comic details ... [It] would seem richly satirical were it not for the fact that it so closely reflects reality. From this fertile material Waldman fashions her compelling ensemble piece ... Elegantly written and tightly plotted ... In these unnerving times in which Waldman has seen facts take the shape of her fiction, [this] novel, at once lucid, illuminating and entertaining is a necessary gift.' --Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review

`An absorbing, accomplished debut ... Waldman [has a] feel for novelistic light and shade and an instinct for chasing down telling, surprising details ... Waldman's sensitivity to the multidimensionality of the issues is matched by an observant eye for the details of social interaction...This knack for shaping scenes, along with judicious intercutting between various elements, make Waldman's novel an intelligent, satisfying read.' --The Sunday Times

`The grief surrounding 9/11 is central to this exceptional debut about a changing America ... The novel centres on Khan and the three family members. Through their stories and interactions Waldman builds a tale of complexity and tension ... Waldman's prose is almost always pitch-perfect, whether describing a Bangladeshi woman's relationship with her landlady or the political manoeuvring within a jury. The characters are wholly realised and believable as individuals, but they also stand in for stories and conflicts that go beyond their own lives.' --Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Book of the Week

`There is a Zole-esque panoply of characters ... Waldman has journalist's facility with charting unlikely connections.' --The New Yorker

`Amy Waldman's debut novel is the most successful yet at making sense of 9/11 ... Writing the "9/11" novel has, at times, seemed like a test (and a race), a cunningly thought-out exercise to try the mettle of some of the brightest and best in the class. Novelists were quick to take up the challenge: Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man', Colum McCann's 'Let the Great World Spin', Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland', Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children', Paul Auster's 'Man in the Dark', John Updike's 'Terrorist', Martin Amis's 'The Last Days of Muhammad Atta', Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' ... ['The Submission'] is the best 9/11 novel to date ... Amy Waldman deals not with the attack itself but with the knots in which the US has tied itself in the aftermath ... This is a counter-factual fiction that starts with the competition to design a memorial to sit at Ground Zero ... The carefully selected jury argues its way through the anonymous submissions to a winner...The jurors' relief at negotiating the high profile and fractious process is judderingly cut short when the chairman opens the envelope containing the name of the designer: Mohammad Khan. Or, as one juror spouts, "Jesus fucking Christ! It's a goddamn Muslim!"...From this coup de théâtre Waldman skilfully spins out an ever-widening cast list...At the heart of the storm stand Mohammad Khan and Claire Burwell, a 9/11 widow and the representative of the bereaved on the jury. With great adroitness Waldman portrays her vacillations as she grapples with the ramification of the decision as those of liberal America itself... It is a struggle Waldman depicts with both intelligence and wit, in accomplished prose. This is a deeply thoughtful and moving account of the myriad ways in which, when the towers came down, the US psyche became a casualty too.' --Michael Prodger, Financial Times

`A deft debut ... This bold, self-assured debut has already been compared to Tom Wolfe's THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES ... Waldman, with ferocious intelligence, presents various archetypes of the endless soul searching affecting every strata of American life ... A convincing depiction of the turbulent emotion and political capital wrenched from tragedy ... Waldman's fearless dissection of the commodity of public sorrow is to be applauded.' --Catherine Taylor, Sunday Telegraph

'A powerful, intelligent and moving study of the world post-9/11, with all its political, racial and religious tensions, bigotry, idealism and grief ... What Waldman has achieved in her commanding first novel is to explore the grief of a nation in all its contradictory, sometimes bigoted, often ugly, detail.' --Scotsman

`The novel comes alive in the dramatic scenes ... Convincing and graceful.' --Independent

`Thought provoking and beautiful.' --Glamour Must-Read

`It is a mark of Waldman's skill that she marshals disparate forces in the service of a coherent, timely and fascinating examination of a grieving America's relationship with itself. Waldman, a former New York Times reporter, excels at involving the reader in vibrant dialogues in which the level of the debate is high and the consequences significant ... Counterbalancing the wit and philosophical forays is a recurring scene of genuine pathos...Brilliantly, Waldman gives us back our own world ... The lineage of post-9/11 novels is illustrious ... Amy Waldman takes this literary line forward, and it is through her respect for history that her novel stands so proudly within it.' --Chris Cleave, Washington Post

Praise for "The Submission
""Amy Waldman's "The Submission "is a wrenching panoramic novel about the politics of grief in the wake of 9/11. From the aeries of municipal government and social power, to the wolf-pack cynicism of the press, to the everyday lives of the most invisible of illegal immigrants and all the families that were left behind, Waldman captures a wildly diverse city wrestling with itself in the face of a shared trauma like no other in its history." --Richard Price, author of "Freedomland "and "Lush Life
""Amy Waldman writes like a possessed angel. She also has the emotional smarts to write a story about Islam in America that fearlessly lasers through all our hallucinatory politics with elegant concision. This is no dull and worthy saga; it's a literary breakthrough that reads fast and breaks your heart." --Lorraine Adams, author of "Harbor "and "The Room and the Chair
""Frighteningly plausible and tightly wound . . . Waldman addresses with a re --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.