Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter―radicalized by the online alt-right―attacks the school.
As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother's dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father's oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.
The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman's life in a nation at odds with its ideals.
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Another angry phone call, and it was only Tuesday. NURRIDEEN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
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(@Legend_Press, 3 August 2020, 312 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 13 August)
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This is an incredible book, one of the best I've read in ages. This is a profound, moving and incredibly sad book. The book opens in the present when the shots ring in the school and goes back in the past to explore the life and upbringing of the school's head teacher, Afaf and returns to the present only a few times across the book's narrative. I cried a lot reading this because the book reached right into my chest and squeezed my heart. The book is not comfortable to read all the time as it focuses on xenophobia and extreme views in the US of Muslin people after 9/11, views that I know are still felt and expressed today which gives me great cause for concern. I was impressed by the way the author humanises the shooter instead of turning him into nothing more than a hateful monster. I couldn't stop reading once I started because I got so caught up in the story.
