The Submission

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 winner's name and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam.

The memorial's designer is Mohammad Khan, an enigmatic, ambitious architect. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the mediagenic Claire Burwell. But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, Claire finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself. All will bring the emotional weight of their own histories to bear on the urgent question of how to remember, and understand, a national tragedy.

Amy Waldman was co-chief of the South Asia bureau ofThe New York Times. Her fiction has appeared inThe Atlanticand theBoston Reviewand is anthologized inThe Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. She lives with her family in Brooklyn. This is her first novel.

Longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award - an astonishing debut novel from a major new voice in American fiction