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The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
Mohja Kahf
Carroll & Graf
October 2006
On Sale: August 28, 2006
448 pages ISBN: 0786715197 EAN: 9780786715190 Hardcover
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Fiction
Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout,
tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the
crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. Along
with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends,
Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets
exploring the fault-lines between “Muslim” and “American.”
When her picture-perfect marriage goes sour, Khadra flees to
Syria and learns how to pray again. On returning to America
she works in an eastern state — taking care to stay away
from Indiana, where the murder of her friend Tayiba’s sister
by Klan violence years before still haunts her. But when her
job sends her to cover a national Islamic conference in
Indianapolis, she’s back on familiar ground: Attending a
concert by her brother’s interfaith band The Clash of
Civilizations, dodging questions from the “aunties” and
“uncles,” and running into the recently divorced Hakim
everywhere.
Beautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of
characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the
spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America,
from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. It is a
riveting debut from an important new voice.
No awards found for this book.
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