A PURE HEART by Rajia Hassib received well-deserved starred
reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus. This is the contemporary story
of two Egyptian sisters. One, Fayrouz, chooses
to be called Rose and is an archeologist who marries an American journalist,
studies at Columbia University and eventually works at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York. The other sister, Gameela, is more obviously religious (for example, she wears a hijab), harbors
a number of secrets, and is killed in a suicide bombing. Hassib uses flashbacks
to develop the characters and motivations of both sisters. She deftly weaves in
questions of fate and identity: [Rose] “thinks that maybe there are multiple
versions of her, too, just as there are multiple versions of him and multiple
versions of Gameela, and that her different Roses will have to learn to
co-exist, that Gameela’s sister and Mark’s wife cannot go on believing they are
enemies …” and of faith: “so much of faith as she [Gameela] understood it lay
in a constant struggle to improve oneself, in the true meaning of jihad as
an ongoing striving to be better, to do better, to let go of egotistic, selfish
notions….” A PURE HEART is very informative about Egyptian culture and history;
plus, this novel explores so much more, including family relationships, sibling
jealousy, dissent, poverty, privilege, religion, the role of women, guilt, after-life
and death. This would be an excellent title for our Global Voices students as
well as adventurous book groups.
