Book of the Month–March 2013
Title: The Submission
By: Amy Waldman
Claire Harwell, widowed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become a representative of the victims’ families in the media. She has been selected as one member of a jury that will select a memorial that will be erected at Ground Zero.
Submissions to the competition are anonymous. Claire and her fellow jurors select an entry that proposes a memorial garden featuring both living trees and those that have been sculpted out of scrap metal from the towers. A wall surrounding the garden will be engraved with the victims’ names. A crisis arises when the designer’s own name is revealed. He is architect Mohammad Khan, an American Muslim.
The Submission examines the fallout from the perspectives of several diverse characters. Bankers, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens are all drawn into the debate. As tension over the decision escalates, Claire finds herself wrestling with her principles and her emotions.
Also available as:
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Acknowledgments and Awards
2011: Barnes and Noble Book of the Year
2011: Esquire Magazine Book of the Year
2011: Guardian First Book Award (finalist)
2011: Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
2012: PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction (finalist)
Book Reviews
The Guardian
The New York Times
The Washington Post
About the Author
After graduating from Yale in 1991 with a BA in English, Amy Waldman lived for two years in South Africa where she taught at the University of Western Cape and working as a freelance journalist. She worked as an editor at the Washington Post and Washington Monthly before becoming a local reporter for the New York Times in 1997. In 2001, she was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning memorial project profiling each of the victims of the World Trade Center attack. While working at the New York she became a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan and was also the co-chief of its New Delhi bureau for 3 years.
The Submission is Amy Waldman’s debut novel.
Author Interviews
New Statesman
New York Observer
Read Alikes
If you liked The Submission, you may also enjoy:
Other Fiction
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Falling Man by Don Delillo
The Good Life by Jay McInerney
The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Non-Fiction
Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World after September 11 by Thomas Friedman
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America by Susan Faludi
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