Godsend

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Aden Grace Sawyer has travelled a long way to begin her new life, and she'll travel further to protect her secret. But once she's in Pakistan, Aden finds herself in more danger than she could have imagined. Faced with violence and loss, she must make choices that will test not only her faith, but her understanding of who she is.

Compelling, unnerving and timely, Godsend is a study of what it means for a person to give themselves to their faith, and how far they will go to find a place to belong.

Reviews

Frequently mesmerising . . . This is a significant literary performance -- Dwight Garner * * New York Times * *
Rawly unsentimental but illuminated throughout by a subtle compassion, Godsend is a novel of enormous emotional intelligence which makes for compelling and consistently unpredictable reading -- Robin Yassin-Kassab * * Guardian * *
The 9/11 novel that finally understands the fulfilments of faith . . . It is not only Wray's heroine but also his novel that comes of age, steadily deepening and astounding as it develops . . . Godsend impresses because Wray is so fearlessly committed to his fictional world, and to his own depiction of it -- James Wood * * New Yorker * *
Wray's storytelling is so taut, his psychology so audacious -- JONATHAN FRANZEN * * Guardian * *
A nervy drama of secrecy and desire . . . Fascinating * * Observer * *
Illuminating . . . At a time when so many novelists are turning towards inner landscapes, Wray has undertaken a journey to the edge of the unimaginable -- Michael LaPointe * * Times Literary Supplement * *
Brilliantly executed . . . Wray's novel is on one hand an entirely familiar story of youthful rebellion and on the other an unimaginable depiction of a cold-blooded killer groomed by the world's most notorious army * * Wall Street Journal * *
Intense yet economic, equally poignant and chilling, Godsend melds reality and myth . . . An unlikely and complex parable that puts faith, religion, gender and identity under an unforgiving spotlight, Wray has produced something genuinely thought-provoking * * Irish Times * *
Wray writes with an elegant economy . . . Wray's understanding of the beauties and cruelties of religious faith is deeply impressive . . . This is a very fine novel indeed . . . Anybody who seeks to understand the world as it is today will find enlightenment here -- Allan Massie * * Scotsman * *

This novel crosses lines that fiction should, stretching the imagination from suburban California to a jihadi training camp in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. Wray's taut prose propels a gripping narrative that stands head and shoulders above most fiction about America's war on terror

Author Bio

John Wray is the author of five novels, including The Lost Time Accidents and Lowboy. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, and a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, and has been named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. A citizen of both the United States and Austria, he lives in New York City.

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