Deb Baker discusses "The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism"
Common Good Books, Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 7pm
What drives a young woman raised in a New York City suburb to convert to Islam, abandon her country and Jewish faith, and embrace a life of exile in Pakistan? "A stellar biography that doubles as a meditation on the fraught relationship between America and the Muslim world. . . . The Convert is a cogent, thought-provoking look at a radical life and its rippling consequences."--Publishers Weekly “Deborah Baker’s astonishing book reads like a detective story but is also a work of enormous beauty and understanding. She has explored the most difficult of subjects in an evocative and original way, powerfully conjuring a bygone, albeit simpler era when an argument between Islam and the West first arose fifty years ago. The convert is the most brilliant and moving book written about Islam and the West since 9/11.”--Ahmed Rashid, author ofTaliban and Descent into Chaos A cache of Maryam’s letters to her parents in the archives of the New York Public Library sends acclaimed biographer Deborah Baker on her own odyssey into the labyrinthine heart of twentieth-century century Islam. Casting a shadow over these letters is the mysterious figure of Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi, both Maryam’s adoptive father and the man who laid the intellectual foundations for militant Islam.
As she assembles the pieces of a singularly perplexing life, Baker finds herself captive to questions raised by Maryam’s journey. Is her story just another bleak chapter in a so-called clash of civilizations? Or does it signify something else entirely? And is the life depicted in Maryam’s letters home and in her books an honest reflection of the one she lived? This event is co-sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute at the College of St. Benedict. ----
In 1990 Deborah Baker moved to Calcutta where she studied Bengali and wrote In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Since then, her essays have appeared in a range of publications from The New York Times to the Calcutta Statesmen. With her husband, the writer Amitav Ghosh, and her two children Lila and Nayan, she now divides her time between Calcutta, Goa and Brooklyn.
Location: Street: 38 S Snelling Ave City: Saint Paul, Province: Minnesota Postal Code: 55105 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)
As she assembles the pieces of a singularly perplexing life, Baker finds herself captive to questions raised by Maryam’s journey. Is her story just another bleak chapter in a so-called clash of civilizations? Or does it signify something else entirely? And is the life depicted in Maryam’s letters home and in her books an honest reflection of the one she lived? This event is co-sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute at the College of St. Benedict. ----
In 1990 Deborah Baker moved to Calcutta where she studied Bengali and wrote In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Since then, her essays have appeared in a range of publications from The New York Times to the Calcutta Statesmen. With her husband, the writer Amitav Ghosh, and her two children Lila and Nayan, she now divides her time between Calcutta, Goa and Brooklyn.
Location: Street: 38 S Snelling Ave City: Saint Paul, Province: Minnesota Postal Code: 55105 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)
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