mad bad & dangerous to know samira ahmed

But she is not a blank page of passport everyone gets to stamp a label of their choosing! She wants to be heard, she wants to leave her traces in the universe! She wants to follow her own path to create her own story she’s destined to do! She wants you to know her name. She is French American, Indian American and also Muslim American. Khayyam, the young heroine of the book named after famous Persian poet Omar Khayyam. So I locked myself in my bathroom and kept on dancing (of course I put blanket on the mirror not to see myself) and started my reading! OMG! Isn’t it enchanting idea to read a book about two powerful women from different time lines who want to raise their voices and tell their stories! One of them is in Paris, searching for the deepest secrets hid behind a remarkable drawing with a charming French guy carries his descendant Alexandre Dumas’ name! And the other woman is a haseki, leaving behind the walls of Ottoman Harem, telling her secret love triangle story which resulted tragically!ĭidn’t you get excited and start to dance like me? To get in the mood I added some Oriental belly shake moves to my dance but my friends laughed so hard and recorded me (yes, after seeing my magical movies on their phone camera, I decided they were combination of Gangham style and a hamster who tries to catch its own tail! So I gave up!) in the meantime. In the present day-and with the company of a descendant of Alexandre Dumas-Khayyam begins to connect allusions to an enigmatic 19th-century Muslim woman whose path may have intersected with Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Delacroix, and Lord Byron.Įchoing across centuries, Leila and Khayyam’s lives intertwine, and as one woman’s long-forgotten life is uncovered, another’s is transformed.

Two hundred years before Khayyam’s summer of discontent, Leila is struggling to survive and keep her true love hidden from the Pasha who has “gifted” her with favored status in his harem. But her maybe-ex-boyfriend is probably ghosting her, she might have just blown her chance at getting into her dream college, and now all she really wants is to be back home in Chicago figuring out her messy life instead of brooding in the City of Light. This holiday with her professor parents should be a dream trip for the budding art historian. It’s August in Paris and 17-year-old Khayyam Maquet-American, French, Indian, Muslim-is at a crossroads. Told in alternating narratives that bridge centuries, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed traces the lives of two young women fighting to write their own stories and escape the pressure of familial burdens and cultural expectations in worlds too long defined by men.

Mad bad & dangerous to know samira ahmed