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The Submission: A Novel by Amy Waldman
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The Submission: A Novel (original 2011; edition 2011)

by Amy Waldman

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9837121,061 (3.71)88
Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Claire Harwell hasn't settled into grief; events haven't let her. Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack. Of the thousands of anonymous submissions that she and her fellow jurors examine, one transfixes Claire: a garden on whose walls the names of the dead are inscribed. But when the winning envelope is opened, they find the designer is Mohammad Khanâ??Moâ??an enigmatic Muslim-American who, it seems, feels no need to represent anyone's beliefs except his own.

When the design and its creator are leaked, a media firestorm erupts, and Claire finds herself trying to balance principles against emotions amid escalating tensions about the place of Islam in America. A remarkably bold and ambitious debut, The Submission is peopled with journalists, activists, mourners, and bureaucrats who struggle for advantage and fight for their ideals. In this deeply humane novel, the breadth of Amy Waldman's cast of characters is matched by her startling ability to conjure individual lives from their own points of view. A striking portrait of a cityâ??and a countryâ??fractured by old hatreds and new struggles, The Submission is a major novel by an important new… (more)

Member:topcat21
Title:The Submission: A Novel
Authors:Amy Waldman
Info:Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2011), Hardcover, 320 pages
Collections:eBook, Your library
Rating:****
Tags:eBook, kindle, audible, 9/11, New York City

Work Information

The Submission by Amy Waldman (2011)

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English (68)  Dutch (2)  German (1)  All languages (71)
Showing 1-5 of 68 (next | show all)
From the jacket: "A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name--and discover he is an American Muslim....Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country's." This book looked at the issues from all angles through each character's perspective. It was thoughtful and interesting and made me consider many points of view. It was also interesting to think about how each character's action or reaction led to another which either eased a situation or made it more explosive.....a really good book. ( )
  ellink | Jan 22, 2024 |
Pearl Rule #5 (p47)

[The Submission] by [[Amy Waldman]]

The Publisher Says: Ten years after 9/11, a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel reimagines its aftermath and wonders what would happen if a Muslim-American was blindly chosen to plan the World Trade Center Memorial.

Claire Harwell hasn't settled into grief; events haven't let her. Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe. She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack.

Of the thousands of anonymous submissions that she and her fellow jurors examine, one transfixes Claire: a garden on whose walls the names of the dead are inscribed. But when the winning envelope is opened, they find the designer is Mohammad Khan - Mo - an enigmatic Muslim-American who, it seems, feels no need to represent anyone's beliefs except his own. When the design and its creator are leaked, a media firestorm erupts, and Claire finds herself trying to balance principles against emotions amid escalating tensions about the place of Islam in America.

A remarkably bold and ambitious debut, The Submission is peopled with journalists, activists, mourners, and bureaucrats who struggle for advantage and fight for their ideals. In this deeply humane novel, the breadth of Amy Waldman's cast of characters is matched by her startling ability to conjure individual lives from their own points of view. A striking portrait of a city - and a country - fractured by old hatreds and new struggles, The Submission is a major novel by an important new talent.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER AGES AGO. FINALLY GOT SOME OF IT READ.

My Review: This rubbed me the wrong way:
To Mo the ruins had a timeless quality.

"The way of all fucked-up third-world countries," his seatmate said.
They were left for dinner at a French restaurant hidden behind high earthen walls. There was a garden draped with grapevines, a small apple orchard, and a swimming pool full of Europeans and Americans dive-bombing each other. Chlorine and marjoram and marijuana and frying butter mingled in an unfamiliar, heady mix.
"Wonder what the Afghans think of this," one of the architects said, waving his hand to take in the bikinied women and beery men.
"Hot chicks and fruit trees: they're missing their own paradise," said someone else at the table —Mo hadn't bothered to remember most of their names. "I'm surprised they're not blowing themselves up to get in here."
"Some of them don't have to," his seatmate from the van said, his eyes on Mo.

Yes yes yes, I know I'm not supposed to like these yahoos. I know the exoticization of the "third-world" people and culture are presented as the problem. But I just don't want to read it.

I have no quarrel with the author's wordsmithery, apart from finding it a bit too predictable for me to wax enthusiastic about. Overall, the story isn't calling to me, the characters are facile, the prose is adequate but no more. Not for me, considering how few eyeblinks I have left to me.
  richardderus | May 18, 2023 |
The Submission details the story of a contest to design the 9/11 memorial. The winning design is chosen by a blind jury that is unaware of who designed each submission. When it turns out that a Muslim, Mohammed Khan, submitted the winning design, essentially all hell breaks loose.

This book handles its subject matter very well - - showing the issue from every possible angle: the families', the media, the contest winner, the American Muslim community, etc.

This novel was extremely realistic . . .to the point that I almost didn't feel like I was reading a novel. Until the final chapter, it almost read more like an in-depth news expose.

Not quite sure why I couldn't give this five stars. It's very well done, but I think because it is SO focused, and also has a lot of messaging, I think that the impact of the book as a whole is a little bit dulled. I didn't quite care enough about the characters because I didn't see quite enough of their lives outside of the particular specific issue with which they were dealing.

At any rate, if you are interested in 9/11, I definitely would put this on your list. I also feel it would be an excellent book club read with lots to discuss. ( )
  Anita_Pomerantz | Mar 23, 2023 |
Utterly brilliant novel. Insightful, humane, complex, intricately plotted - phenomenally good. ( )
  wordloversf | Aug 14, 2021 |
A very interesting premise, what if a Muslim won the competition to design the 9/11 memorial. Reminded me a lot of the controversy surrounding the mosque being built a few blocks from ground zero. The arguments from all sides were very similar here.

Would make a great book to read and discuss with a book club. ( )
  littlemuls | Jan 28, 2021 |
Showing 1-5 of 68 (next | show all)
While there is no shortage of American writers who bemoan all that has been done to their nation, by their nation, in the name of 9/11, there has been, until now, a dearth of American novels exploring that particular trajectory (there is a dearth of American novelists exploring what has been done to other nations by their nation, too, but that's another matter). There are, of course, various ideas about why this is so. One of them is this: how do you take the trauma and grief of 9/11 as the starting point of a novel and move on to a tale of suspended civil liberties and prejudice without the former entirely overshadowing the latter? Waldman takes hold of this potential stumbling block and turns it into the bedrock of her novel. The grief surrounding 9/11 – the forms it takes, the claims it makes, the claims made in its name by third parties, the hierarchy which surrounds it (not all griefs are equal), the guilt and anger which are born from it, the gulf between the silence of private grief and the clamour of public grief – is central to this exceptional debut about a changing America.
added by kidzdoc | editThe Guardian, Kamila Shamsie (Aug 27, 2011)
 
“The Submission” is set not in 2010 but in 2003, and concerns not a mosque but a 9/11 memorial. A jury, assembled by the state’s governor, has spent months reviewing architects’ anonymous submissions for a monument to be built on the site of the tragedy. Finally, a winner is selected: the design is called “The Garden” (in contrast with the other finalist, “The Void”), and its detractors can fault it only for being “too beautiful.” But once the choice is settled and a name attached to the blueprints, the jury discovers, to its alarm, that the architect is a Muslim named Mohammad Khan.

Elegantly written and tightly plotted, “The Submission” ultimately remains a novel about the unfolding of a dramatic situation — a historian’s novel — rather than a novel that explores the human condition with any profundity. And yet in these unnerving times, in which Waldman has seen facts take the shape of her fiction, a historian’s novel at once lucid, illuminating and entertaining is a necessary and valuable gift.
added by kidzdoc | editNew York Times, Claire Messud (Aug 21, 2011)
 
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Epigraph
Like the cypress tree, which holds its head high and is free within the confines of a garden, I, too, feel free in this world, and I am not bound by its attachments.
Dedication
To my parents, Don and Marilyn Waldman
First words
"The names," Claire said. "What about the names?"
Quotations
"Didn't you listen to her speech? She was saying terrorists shouldn't count more than people like her husband. But your questions - the suspicions they contain - make them count more. You assume we all must think like them unless we prove otherwise."
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Claire Harwell hasn't settled into grief; events haven't let her. Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack. Of the thousands of anonymous submissions that she and her fellow jurors examine, one transfixes Claire: a garden on whose walls the names of the dead are inscribed. But when the winning envelope is opened, they find the designer is Mohammad Khanâ??Moâ??an enigmatic Muslim-American who, it seems, feels no need to represent anyone's beliefs except his own.

When the design and its creator are leaked, a media firestorm erupts, and Claire finds herself trying to balance principles against emotions amid escalating tensions about the place of Islam in America. A remarkably bold and ambitious debut, The Submission is peopled with journalists, activists, mourners, and bureaucrats who struggle for advantage and fight for their ideals. In this deeply humane novel, the breadth of Amy Waldman's cast of characters is matched by her startling ability to conjure individual lives from their own points of view. A striking portrait of a cityâ??and a countryâ??fractured by old hatreds and new struggles, The Submission is a major novel by an important new

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Book description
Ten years after the events of September 11, 2011, Claire Burwell a member on a jury that gathered to anonymously appoint the architect for a memorial, is confronted with public outrage when the media leaks that the winner is an American Muslim and is forced to face journalists, activists, and politicians while trying to find the best way to remember and understand the national tragedy.
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