A Door in the Earth

August 5, 2019
Waldman’s potent novel (after The Submission) follows Parveen Shamsa, freshly out of college and inspired by Mother Afghanistan, a memoir written by an American ophthalmologist named Gideon Crane recounting his time working in remote Afghanistan, as she sets out to retrace Crane’s footsteps. Armed with a grant from UC Berkeley and introductions to Crane’s old host, Waheed, Parveen, an Afghan-American from Northern California, heads for the maternity clinic Crane built for the village, intent on reconnecting with her Afghan heritage and actualizing her idealism. Reality, however, is far more complicated than Crane’s palatable account: without a doctor, the clinic is a hollow shell, and Crane’s meddling did little more than throw the lives of locals into chaos. When a detachment of U.S. Army engineers begin construction on a road to the village—a PR play inspired by the clinic’s fame—the convenient fantasy constructed by Mother Afghanistan comes into direct conflict with the messy realities of war. Waldman, a former reporter for the New York Times out of Kabul, paints a blistering portrayal of the misguided aspirations and convenient lies that have fed the war in Afghanistan. This is an impressive novel. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

Starred review from July 1, 2019
Waldman (The Submission, 2011) is an ingenious and probing situational novelist. The catalyst here is a best-selling do-gooder's memoir, Mother Afghanistan, by an American doctor turned aid-evangelist, Gideon Crane. California college senior Parveen, who was born in Afghanistan, has fallen under the spell of Crane's story of how the death of a lovely young woman in childbirth in a remote valley without medical facilities inspired him to build a women's clinic. Seeking an outlet for her cultural anthropology ambitions, Parveen decides to go live with the deceased woman's husband, Waheed, and his family to study the impact of Crane's work. Nothing is as she imagined it. In this deeply well-informed, utterly engrossing, mischievously disarming, and stealthily suspenseful tale of slow and painful realizations, Waldman hits the mark over and over again as Parveen not only plunges into the divide between her privileged life and the severe limitations Waheed's two wives and the other village women contend with, but is also forced to recognize the tragic ironies of Crane's influence, especially on the American military. Every aspect of this complex and caustic tale of hype and harm is saturated with insight and ruefulness as Parveen wises up and Waldman considers womanhood and choice, literacy and translation, hubris and lies, unintended consequences, and the devastating chaos of war.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019

Waldman's 2011 literary debut, The Submission, meditated on the complexity of grief and identity as the story focused on an American Muslim architect winning a contest to design the Ground Zero Memorial. Who ultimately has a right to tell that narrative of remembrance? Here, Waldman tackles a similar theme through Plato's concept of the Noble Lie. Inspired by Mother Afghanistan, a memoir by Gideon Crane, Parveen Shamsa embarks on a journey to locate the medical clinic he founded and learn about its impact on the country. She views her trip as fieldwork in preparation for her career as an anthropologist. However, as Parveen gains acceptance into the community, she also begins to realize that Gideon's descriptions of the people and region don't match reality. His story is a lie. By the time American soldiers arrive in the village, Parveen is left wondering whether Gideon's fictional memoir was produced for altruistic or monetary reasons. VERDICT Much like Brian Van Reet's Spoils, Waldman's new work offers a deeply complicated and thought-provoking story about the purposeful obfuscation of truth in service to Western idealism. [See Prepub Alert, 2/11/19.]--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019

An Afghan American anthropology student at Berkeley caught between parents trying to assimilate and a professor critical of the West, Parveen is inspired by humanitarian Gideon Crane's Mother Afghanistan to travel to her homeland and join his foundation. There she finds a barely functioning clinic and evident fakery on Crane's part. From the author of the multi-award-winning, best-booked, and nationally best-selling The Submission.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019

An Afghan American anthropology student at Berkeley caught between parents trying to assimilate and a professor critical of the West, Parveen is inspired by humanitarian Gideon Crane's Mother Afghanistan to travel to her homeland and join his foundation. There she finds a barely functioning clinic and evident fakery on Crane's part. From the author of the multi-award-winning, best-booked, and nationally best-selling The Submission.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 15, 2019
A young Afghan American finds life in a remote Afghan village to be very different from the narrative she had been fed back home in this novel from a former New York Times Afghanistan correspondent. Given that the U.S. has been keen to win the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan since 9/11, Americans will willingly lap up any story that sheds the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship in a positive light. Dr. Gideon Crane's wildly successful memoir, Mother Afghanistan, fits the bill. The (fictional) bestseller narrates the tale of Crane's efforts to do good in a poverty-stricken village. Crane's best intentions didn't amount to much as he helplessly watched Fereshta, a young mother, die from complications in childbirth. In a sweeping gesture of goodwill, years later, Crane built a hospital in the village in her honor, a monument that drew thousands of donations from well-meaning Americans trying to justify their country's actions. Parveen Shamsa, a newly minted college graduate, is drawn in by Crane's account and travels to the same village to exercise her medical anthropological skills and connect with her Afghan roots. To her dismay, Parveen finds gaping holes in Crane's narrative and slowly realizes that "the village was a backdrop against which Americans played out their fantasies of benevolence or self-transformation or, more recently, control." Worse, Crane's memoir also galvanizes the U.S. Army to deliver its own brand of feel-good medicine to the town, with unsurprisingly tragic consequences. Through a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives--from Parveen's host family to the village elderman, the gynecologist who can only visit weekly, and the military top brass who bring the war to town--Waldman (The Submission, 2011) delivers a breathtaking and achingly nuanced examination of the grays in a landscape where black and white answers have long been the only currency. A bone-chilling takedown of America's misguided use of soft power.

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