The Sweetness of Tears - by Nafisa Haji (Paperback)

About the Book

From the acclaimed author of "The Writing on My Forehead" comes a novel about a woman who travels from California to Chicago, Pakistan to Iraq, chasing loose threads that she hopes will lead to the truth and understanding of her own beginnings.

Book Synopsis

From Nafisa Haji, author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Writing on My Forehead, comes The Sweetness of Tears, an emotional, deeply layered story that explores the far reaching effects of cultural prejudice, forbidden love, and hidden histories on a young woman and her family. A paperback original from a superb writer whose first novel was enthusiastically praised by Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Haji, an American of Indo-Pakistani descent, writes with grace, heart, and wisdom about the collisions of culture and religion, tradition and modernity played out through individual lives.

From the Back Cover

When faith and facts collide, Jo March--a young woman born into an Evangelical Christian dynasty--wrestles with questions about who she is and how she fits into the weave of her faithful family. Chasing loose threads that she hopes will lead to the truth, Jo sets off on an unlikely quest across boundaries of language and religion, through chasms of sectarian divides in the Muslim world. Against the backdrop of the War on Terror--travelling from California to Chicago, Pakistan to Iraq--she delves deeply into the past, encountering relatives, often for the first time, whose histories are intricately intertwined with her own . . . only to learn that true spiritual devotion is a broken field riddled with doubt and that nothing is ever as it seems.

A story of forbidden love and familial dysfunction that interweaves multiple generational and cultural viewpoints, The Sweetness of Tears is a powerful reminder of the ties that bind us, the choices that divide us, and the universal joys and tragedies that shape us all.

Review Quotes

"...A family story, and the many threads eventually cleave to illustrate how a complicated blend of race, religion, culture, and tradition can create peace rather than conflict." -- Publishers Weekly

"The type of storytelling that opens the reader's eyes to other lives." -- The Columbus Dispatch

"[Haji's] new novel will appeal to readers interested in the clash of cultures. Promising for discussion, as the reading group guide suggests." -- Library Journal