Radiant refugees from Nawaaz Ahmed
Seema works as an advisor to Kamala Harris’s campaign for the attorney general in Obama-era San Francisco and has built a prosperous life in the West, despite still grappling with her father’s long-ago decision to keep her out of the family banish after being considered a lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks the company of those who once renounced her: her sick mother Nafeesa, who is traveling alone from Chennai to California, and her pious sister Tahera, a doctor who lives with hers Husband and their children in Texas.
But instead of a joyful reconciliation that anticipates the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week bring to light years of betrayal, misunderstanding, and complicated ideas of love – a web of emotions as beautiful and diverse as the era itself.
Told from the perspective of Seema’s child at birth and steeped in the scriptures of the Koran and the classical poetry of Wordsworth and Keats, Radiant Fugitives is a moving story that plays against the recent events of American political life of a struggling family with forgiveness and lasting love.
Reasons to read: This follows three generations of a Muslim-Indian family, each flawed and three-dimensional. This is emotional read that is empathetic to any of its characters, even when they are in opposition, and it promises a “blockbuster ending that has to be read to be believed”.
