2022 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee)
A BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, OPRAH DAILY, AND NYLON
In the last weeks of her pregnancy, a Muslim Indian lesbian living in San Francisco receives a visit from her estranged mother and sister that surfaces long held secrets and betrayals in this "sweeping family saga . . . with the beautiful specificity of real lives lived, loved, and fought for" (Entertainment Weekly).
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
In the last weeks of her pregnancy, a Muslim Indian lesbian living in San Francisco receives a visit from her estranged mother and sister that surfaces long held secrets and betrayals in this "sweeping family saga . . . with the beautiful specificity of real lives lived, loved, and fought for" (Entertainment Weekly).
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"With a fine sense of the complex relationships among women kin, Nawaaz Ahmed has crafted an exquisite tale that explores the contradictions, love, compassion, and forgiveness in a family divided by tradition, sexuality, rivalry, religion, patriarchy, and geography." - Susan Abulhawa
"Radiant Fugitives is a rare marvel, an intimate epic of faith and family, love and politics, knit together by a magical omniscience of profound compassion." - Peter Ho Davies
"A tender and heartbreaking love letter to San Francisco, to family, faith, tradition, and all the ways we get lost in them, Radiant Fugitives is richly drawn, poetic, and mesmerizing. Nawaaz Ahmed is a marvelous and intricate storyteller." - Natashia Deon
"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
"Nawaaz Ahmed's remarkable debut novel brings to life a loving family torn apart by parental rejection, clashing values, sibling rivalry, and geographical and emotional distances. Radiant Fugitives is a profound and in-depth exploration of our common humanity, and the ways in which we are more alike than different." - Wally Lamb
"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
"Elegantly crafted and luminously written, Nawaaz Ahmed's first novel is a fearless exploration of the clash between identity, sexuality, and religion." - Manil Suri
"Radiant Fugitives is a rare marvel, an intimate epic of faith and family, love and politics, knit together by a magical omniscience of profound compassion." - Peter Ho Davies
"A tender and heartbreaking love letter to San Francisco, to family, faith, tradition, and all the ways we get lost in them, Radiant Fugitives is richly drawn, poetic, and mesmerizing. Nawaaz Ahmed is a marvelous and intricate storyteller." - Natashia Deon
"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
"Nawaaz Ahmed's remarkable debut novel brings to life a loving family torn apart by parental rejection, clashing values, sibling rivalry, and geographical and emotional distances. Radiant Fugitives is a profound and in-depth exploration of our common humanity, and the ways in which we are more alike than different." - Wally Lamb
"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
"Elegantly crafted and luminously written, Nawaaz Ahmed's first novel is a fearless exploration of the clash between identity, sexuality, and religion." - Manil Suri
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