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Welcome to the official website of writer Fadia Faqir
'Jordanian British author Fadia Faqir has written an exquisite novel describing the plight of Salma, a young Bedouin woman who has become pregnant before marriage and must flee her village to avoid being murdered by her brother, as the tribal code of honor killings demands. Told in the first person, the discontinuous narrative of Salma's life is as well constructed as a mosaic in which each tile is lovely in itself but helps to create a whole that is breathtaking. As the reader is taken back and forth in time, Salma reinvents herself as an immigrant in England, where she finds work as a seamstress, makes friends with a Pakistani woman also fleeing her family's wrath, copes with her aging alcoholic roommate, learns English, and eventually enters the university. Yet she is unable to escape her past; she's haunted by memories of her village childhood, eight years in protective custody in a Middle Eastern prison, time spent in a Lebanese convent, and, most important, the daughter taken from her. As Salma's life moves toward its inevitable climax, readers will be transfixed. Strongly recommended for all literary collections.' Andrea Kempf, Library Journal
Click here to read an extract from My Name is Salma
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