Godsend
John Wray
“I'm going to get to places that you've never been. All kinds of places. I'm going to see things you couldn't even dream of.”
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Inspired by ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh, this compelling novel from the award-winning author tells the story of a young girl leaving her home, family and country for radical Islam
Aden Grace Sawyer has travelled a long way to begin her new life, and she’ll travel further to protect her secret. But once she’s in Pakistan, Aden finds herself in more danger than she could have imagined. Faced with violence and loss, she must make choices that will test not only her faith, but her understanding of who she is.
Compelling, unnerving and timely, Godsend is a study of what it means for a person to give themselves to their faith, and how far they will go to find a place to belong.
“Frequently mesmerising … This is a significant literary performance”
Dwight Garner
new York Times
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“Rawly unsentimental but illuminated throughout by a subtle compassion, Godsend is a novel of enormous emotional intelligence which makes for compelling and consistently unpredictable reading”
Robin Yassin-kassab
guardian
“The 9/11 novel that finally understands the fulfilments of faith … It is not only Wray’s heroine but also his novel that comes of age, steadily deepening and astounding as it develops … Godsend impresses because Wray is so fearlessly committed to his fictional world, and to his own depiction of it”
James Wood
new Yorker
“Wray’s storytelling is so taut, his psychology so audacious”
Jonathan Franzen
guardian
“A nervy drama of secrecy and desire … Fascinating”
observer
John Wray
John Wray is the author of five novels, including The Lost Time Accidents and Lowboy. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, and has been named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. A citizen of both the United States and Austria, he lives in New York City.
@John_Wray | johnwray.net
“This is a very fine novel indeed … Anybody who seeks to understand the world as it is today will find enlightenment here.”
Allan Massie
Scotsman
“I definitely don’t judge people who become passionately involved in a political struggle, even to the point of taking up weapons in the service of that struggle, in the way that I would have before beginning the book.”
John Wray interviewed in the Guardian about his novel, Godsend, and the intriguing – and maybe risky – political ground it treads.
Guardian
“A significant literary performance … Godsend builds to a shattering, balefully vivid ending.”
Dwight Garner
New York Times