Rajia Hassib's new novel is A Pure Heart.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for A Pure Heart, and for your characters Rose and Gameela?Visit Rajia Hassib's website.
A: I wanted to write a novel that explored the complex personal and geopolitical situations that form the backdrop of any terrorist attack. I’m always dismayed by how often such attacks are spoken of as if they were easily explained. When the terrorist is a Muslim, so many people seem too ready to buy into his own justification of his heinous act.
But research has proven that the real motives are much more complex than the simple justifications that terrorists resort to in order to assume a moral position that makes them believe their acts are good, not evil.
One way to portray this complexity was to depict an attack where the terrorist and his victims all belonged to the same religion, a very common scenario that automatically rules out the most simplistic explanation of how the terrorist justified murder through labeling his victims as infidels. So this was how Gameela’s character was born—she was to be the victim.
Once I started working on the personal stories of the various characters...[read on]
Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.
The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.
--Marshal Zeringue