Articles tagged "The Convert"

Publishers Weekly's Best Books 2011:

Let's kick off a new week with a look at all of the excellent Macmillan titles from Publishers Weekly's Best Books from 2011.

Top 10:

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Mystery/Thriller:

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Poetry:

Touch by Henri Cole
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

Comics:

Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton
Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

Nonfiction:

One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
The Convert by Deborah Baker
The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cerca
The Beautiful and the Damned by Siddhartha Deb
Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso
A Book of Secrets by Michael Holroyd

See Publishers Weekly's full list of best books here.

Reviews and Publicity

The National Book Award Finalists!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to bring you the National Book Award-finalists from Macmillan!

Fiction:
SALVAGE THE BONES by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury USA)

Nonfiction:
THE CONVERT by Deborah Baker (Graywolf Press)

Poetry:
THE CHAMELEON COUCH by Yusef Komunyakaa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
DOUBLE SHADOW by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

See the full list of NBA-nominees at Publishers Weekly.

Reviews and Publicity

Three Stars for The Convert

What drives a young woman raised in a postwar New York City suburb to convert to Islam, abandon her country and Jewish faith, and embrace a life of exile in Pakistan? THE CONVERT tells the story of how Margaret Marcus of Larchmont became Maryam Jameelah of Lahore, one of the most trenchant and celebrated voices of Islam’s argument with the West.

"[A] stellar biography that doubles as a mediation on the fraught relationship between America and the Muslim world. [...] This is a cogent, thought-provoking look at a radical life and its rippling consequences." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A significant contemporary figure in Islamic-Western relations becomes human, with all the foibles and angst that word implies. General readers will find this story compelling, while scholars will be pleased with the insight it brings to an important 20th-century Islamist voice. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (starred review)

"An important, searing, highly readable and timely narrative." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Also read the interviews with author Deborah Baker in Publishers Weekly and Shelf Awareness.