Thank you to Counterpoint Press for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Much like Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," Nawaaz Ahmed's "Radiant Fugitive" starts on the night of a catastrophic birth. Narrated by the fetus of Seema, the story toggles between three distinct female narratives, exploring what it means to be South Asian American in the modern era. There's the mother, Seema, a 30 something year old bisexual political activist living in San Francisco who is struggling between her disillusionment with the political establishment and her ever growing list of lovers. Then there's her sister, Tahera, a stuanch Muslim woman who is trying to raise her kids in the "right" way. Finally, we have the grandmother, Nafeesa, who is struggling with a debilitating chronic illness and trying to hold onto what remains of her family.

Emotional, dramatic, with a strong flair for Keats and lengthy anatomic discussions, this book definitely kept me intrigued the entire time. While I didn't always love the second person, it did allow me to delve into the many POVs presented in the piece. In some ways, the ending did feel anticlimactic because we already knew it from the beginning and because it felt too neatly boxed in for such an otherwise messy piece. What struck me the most is the way Ahmed created unlikable traits in each character - Seema's fickle mods, Tahera's jealousy, Nafeesa's passivity - and still made them humane. Incredible character driven tale.