One hot afternoon in a remote Bangladeshi village, a telegram arrives for Maya Haque. Eight years before, a devastating war tore Maya’s country— and her family—apart. Now she realises it is time to return home at last. Maya arrives to find that everything has changed. Her old friends have been seduced by the lure of new money, her city’s streets have been renamed and the freedom she had once yearned for is a long-forgotten dream. Worst of all, her beloved brother Sohail has become a stranger to her, abandoning his liberal beliefs to become a strict religious leader. As she attempts to come to terms with her brother’s radicalism, Maya will be forced to rethink what it means to be a good daughter, sister, friend and citizen—and to be a good Muslim. She must decide where her loyalties ultimately lie.
Set in the dusty streets of Dhaka and the villages and river-islands of rural Bangladesh, at a time when the rise of religious fundamentalism was a whisper in the wind, The Good Muslim is an epic, unforgettable story of the challenges of peace in the long shadow of war. It is a novel that cleaves to the simple truths that shape all of our lives: that the bonds of family and love often strain to bear the weight of history.