Asghar and Zahra - Sameer Rahim

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Résumé :
LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

Childhood friends Asghar and Zahra were born into the same British Muslim community in west London. But they grow up into very different people. Asghar is a shy boy nervous of stepping outside his family's comfort zone, while Zahra is an ambitious woman who has just finished her degree at Cambridge.

The novel opens on their wedding day as friends and family wonder what could possibly have brought this odd couple together. After a comically disastrous honeymoon, painful secrets from the past throw the relationship further off-balance. And then there's the sinister preacher taking a keen interest in them . . .

A funny, sympathetic and very human novel about the first year of a marriage, and the difficulties of reconciling the sometimes conflicting demands of family, religion and society, Asghar and Zahra is the debut of a striking new talent....

Biographie:
Sameer Rahim was born and lives in London. After reading English at Cambridge, he worked at the London Review of Books then the Daily Telegraph, becoming Deputy Review Editor. He is now Managing Editor of Prospect magazine, and has also written for the New York Times, the New Statesman and Apollo. Asghar and Zahra is his first novel....

Sommaire:
LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

Childhood friends Asghar and Zahra were born into the same British Muslim community in west London. But they grow up into very different people. Asghar is a shy boy nervous of stepping outside his family's comfort zone, while Zahra is an ambitious woman who has just finished her degree at Cambridge.

The novel opens on their wedding day as friends and family wonder what could possibly have brought this odd couple together. After a comically disastrous honeymoon, painful secrets from the past throw the relationship further off-balance. And then there's the sinister preacher taking a keen interest in them . . .

A funny, sympathetic and very human novel about the first year of a marriage, and the difficulties of reconciling the sometimes conflicting demands of family, religion and society, Asghar and Zahra is the debut of a striking new talent....