August Book Club: 'Radiant Fugitives' by Nawaaz Ahmed

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Forum Book Club pick for August 2021 is Nawaaz Ahmed’s debut novel “Radiant Fugitives.” Set in San Francisco in and around 2010, it tells the story of Seema, a lesbian and political organizer with doubts about the efficacy of politics even as she works on the campaigns of President Obama, District Attorney Kamala Harris and California’s 2008 proposition on gay marriage. Over the course of the final five days of her pregnancy, she tries to reconnect with her estranged, terminally ill mother who has travelled from India for the birth, and her devout Muslim sister, in from Texas. Narrated by Seema’s newborn son, the novel weaves together three generations’ stories, drawing inspiration from the Quran and the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:42.3	From KQED.
0:44.3	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:58.4	There's a lot going on in the news these days, and yet we know there's another kind of truth that's found in literature that's necessary to grapple with.
1:06.7	Today it's Book Club Day on Forum. With some of you, we've been reading Noaz Ahmed's debut novel,
1:12.3	Radiant Fugitives, set mostly in San Francisco in the years after President Obama's election,
1:18.6	where nasty undercurrents rode just underneath the swell of hope.
1:22.5	It's a book about politics and faith, family and queerness, the fog, and when it lifts.
1:27.7	That's all next on Forum, after this news.
1:44.0	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:47.0	Forum regularly brings listeners conversations with authors, of course, but a couple months ago,
	...

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