The Submission by Amy Waldman

"There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances."

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 winners name - and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into rolling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country's.

In short, a jury unknowingly chooses a Muslim American architect to design a 9/11 memorial. However, this is not a 9/11 novel. Waldman never cites the date of the attacks, and doesn't mention The World Trade Center, referring to the attack site simply as "the towers". Of course it's no secret Waldman is referencing 9/11, but she avoids the specifics as a way of emphasizing that instead of focusing on the day itself, the novel explores the extreme tensions and complicated race relations of the post-9/11 world. It should be noted that the premise and later conflict that ensues echos that of the Park51 debate; while similar disputes are explored in The Submision, Waldman gives her novel its own unique voice and memorable cast of characters that makes it stand out from any other non-fictionalized story it may resemble.

Waldman examines every side of the table through a diverse array of characters: those who are in support of the Muslim American architect, those who are not, those who change their mind and, of course, Kahn's own frustrations with the contest. With every point of view introduced, the subtext of the novel becomes more complicated, but never confusing. Ultimately Waldman doesn't tell us who is right or wrong, though she does make clear the blind closed-mindedness of many individuals. Rather, the novel encourages the reader to question how many of our post-9/11 fears are sensible and to what extent they are hurting the Muslim Americans in our country.

The propaganda's coming from the people who want to make you a bogeyman. They are creating a climate where dangerous things can happen. The rhetoric is the first step; it coarsens attitudes. Look at the history of Nazi Germany. The Jews thought they were German, until they werne't. Here they're already talking about us as less American. Then they'll say we need containment, and next thing you know we'll be interned.

As the title implies, Waldman weaves the the theme of submission throughout, working on a number of levels, the most obvious being Muhamed Kahn's submission into the contest to design a memorial - the submission that sets the entire book in motion. But the theme of submission goes deeper: the submission that exists between sexes and the submission that exists between cultures. Waldman also explores the refusal of submission, namely the non-apologetic attitude that is characteristic of modern-day America.

Waldman's fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. This is her first novel. If you are looking for a book that will challenge your notions of post 9/11 America, I ask you to let The Submission be it.

A big thanks to my mom for gifting this book to me, it's a favorite of the books I've read so far this year.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011