How far would you go to be free?
Humorous, though tinged with a sense of the tragic, at times risqué, and utterly contemporary, The Harem, is a fast-paced novel about young Asian women and their quest for freedom.
Farina has only one dream: to be free and move away from
Peckville, a Muslim ghetto in a large city. She is eager to escape the clutches of her strict parents who will not let her drink, party or have any kind of contact with males. As soon as she turns eighteen, she sets her dream in motion and gets her own apartment. The only problem is that her minimum-wage job leaves her feeling anything but liberated. How can she resist when her ambitious best friend Sabrina proposes an infallible business idea? How harmful can running as escort agency really be? Will she finally be freed by her increasing wealth and independence, or will she remain enslaved by
her increasing guilt?
“The Harem forcefully expresses the experience of being a child of immigrants, unable to find fulfillment in either the parents’ culture or the adopted one. Fazlul is at her best when describing the interior life of her difficult protagonist, using direct language to examine the places where race, class, and gender intersect. The novel is unflinching in its documentation of the raw frustration of a life lived on the margins.”
– Quill & Quire
The Harem can be purchased here: https://www.mawenzihouse.com/product/the-harem/
Safia Fazlul 