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Novel the reluctant fundamentalist6/30/2023 He comments to an American observer, “It’s remarkable, given its physical insignificance the impact a beard worn by a man of my complexion has on your fellow countrymen” (130). As the novel progresses, Changez is perceived as a terrorist, more and more often. Initially, Changez chooses the latter, but he realizes that it comes with the burden of being perceived as a threat to mainstream American society. He finds himself in the midst of an identity crisis, feeling torn between his Pakistani roots and his newly adopted American lifestyle. Having moved to America to study at Princeton University, Changez lives happily until he has to deal with increased xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment following 9/11. In his novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moshin Hamid imagines the effects of elevated levels of discrimination on the life of a fictional Pakistani Muslim character named Changez. Many non-Muslim Americans falsely deemed that the tenets of Islam advocated the heinous crime, and this heightened their prejudices against Muslims. On September 11, 2001, the United States succumbed to terrorist attacks as the massive World Trade Center Towers, perhaps the best known symbol of America’s business prowess and world domination, crashed to the ground.
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Memorial by Bryan Washington6/30/2023 Neither Benson nor Mitsuko is happy about being stuck with each other, but they slowly develop a relationship that’s not quite friendship and not quite family. Mike picks Mitsuko up from the airport, leaves her with Benson, then flies across the ocean to visit Eiju, whom he hasn’t seen in years. At the start of the novel, Mike’s mother, Mitsuko, flies to Houston to visit him at the same time that his father, Eiju, falls seriously ill back in Osaka. Both men have families they feel distant from: Benson’s father is an alcoholic who never fully accepted his son’s homosexuality, and Mike’s divorced parents have both left Houston for their native Japan. Benson and Mike are on the verge of breaking up, but their passion for each other keeps them from being able to fully pull away. The first and third are narrated by Benson, an African American man living in Houston with his boyfriend, Mike, who narrates the middle section. This debut novel from Washington-author of the award-winning story collection Lot (2019)-is split into three vividly written sections. Benson and Mike, a mixed-race couple in Houston, search for the truth about themselves, each other, and their families.
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The historian novel6/30/2023 The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history. To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. |