The Submission by Amy Waldman

Only a short while after 9/11, a selection committee is tasked with choosing a design for a memorial on Ground Zero. After several rounds of contentious debate, a design and an architect are chosen at last. But upon learning the architect’s identity, the group feeling changes - because the architect is a Muslim man named Mohammed Khan. As the story leaks out, people are must face their own pasts and prejudices and the memorial becomes an intersection of politics, public perception, guilt, and intolerance.

I picked this book up because it got a number of positive reviews and coverage in mainstream publications, like Entertainment Weekly. As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, it seemed like an appropriate time to read this book. There were some pages where I would think, “Oh, that’s too exaggerated, that could never have happened…” and then would remember something I heard on the news or saw on TV. I think this would be a good choice to read with a book club, because then you can talk about the different themes and how people reacted to them.

Find it at IndieBound.

Read it with:
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
We All Fall Down by Eric Walters