Nawaaz Ahmed on “Radiant Fugitives”

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us on Thursday, August 12th at 6pm PT when Nawaaz Ahmed discusses his debut, Radiant Fugitives, with Nina McConigley on Zoom!

Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_bvWs1Xb1R5KoaIVf1tstCg

Praise for Radiant Fugitives

“Radiant Fugitives indeed glows. This is such a beautiful novel, full of light and luminous sentences. Reading it felt like basking in a generous and lucid intelligence. Ahmed writes his characters and their worlds with honesty and compassion. This is a writer to watch, a voice we need.” —Matthew Salesses, author of Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear

“I’ve never read a novel like Nawaaz Ahmed’s Radiant Fugitives, and, I kid you not, I’ve been waiting for this tremendous, complex, moving novel for years, but never expected to receive it…There is so much of life in this book.” —Anita Felicelli, Electric Literature

“Lyrical and deeply moving, Nawaaz Ahmed’s Radiant Fugitives is about the search for love, acceptance, and family, both chosen and received. The novel is big-hearted and clear-eyed, a stellar debut.” —Vanessa Hua, author of A River of Stars

About Radiant Fugitives

A dazzling, operatic debut novel following three generations of a Muslim Indian family confronted with a nation on the brink of change.

Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’s attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, traveling alone to California from Chennai, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera, a doctor living in Texas with her husband and children.

But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding, and complicated layers of love—a tapestry of emotions as riveting and disparate as the era itself.

Told from the point of view of Seema’s child at the moment of his birth, and infused with the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats and verses from the Quran, Radiant Fugitives is a moving tale of a family and a country grappling with acceptance, forgiveness, and enduring love.

About Nawaaz Ahmed

Nawaaz Ahmed was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the winner of several Hopwood Awards. He is the recipient of residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, and VCCA. He’s also a Kundiman and Lambda Literary Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

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