Awards

• Commended for National Book Awards (Nonfiction) 2011

Overview

*A 2011 National Book Award Finalist* A spellbinding story of renunciation, conversion, and radicalism from Pulitzer Prize-finalist biographer Deborah Baker What drives a young woman raised in a postwar New York City suburb to convert to Islam, abandon her country and Jewish faith, and embrace a life of exile in Pakistan? The Convert tells the story of how Margaret Marcus of Larchmont became Maryam Jameelah of Lahore, one of the most trenchant and celebrated voices of Islam's argument with the West. A cache of Maryam's letters to her parents in the archives of the New York Public Library sends the acclaimed biographer Deborah Baker on her own odyssey into the labyrinthine heart of twentieth-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 then there's this: Is the life depicted in Maryam's letters home and in her books an honest reflection of the one she lived? Like many compelling and true tales, The Convert is stranger than fiction. It is a gripping account of a life lived on the radical edge and a profound meditation on the cultural conflicts that frustrate mutual understanding.

Full Product Details

9781555975821

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for The Convert: The Convert is the most brilliant and moving book written about Islam and the West since 9/11. --Ahmed Rashid [Deborah] Baker's captivating account conveys the instability, faith, politics, and improbable cultural migration that make [Maryam] Jameelah's life story so difficult to sum up yet impossible to dismiss. -- The New York Times Book Review [A] stellar biography that doubles as a mediation 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 (starred review) [ The Convert ] is more than a biography; it gets at the heart of the ongoing conflict between Islam and the West. -- Marie Claire [A] profoundly disorienting biography. . . . The story [Baker] is telling is like a hall of mirrors in a fun house--full of so many distortions that the truth can come only in glimpses. The life story of Maryam Jamee

Author Information

Deborah Baker is the author of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as A Blue Hand; The Beats in India. She divides her time between Calcutta, Goa, and Brooklyn.

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