Amy Waldman, Author of A Door in the Earth Book

Waldman made her literary debut with The Submission, a bestseller that explored national divisions by imagining what would happen if a Muslim-American won a contest to design a 9/11 memorial. In her equally rich and thought-provoking new novel, she draws on her experience as former New York Times South Asia bureau chief to investigate the moral complexities of good intentions. The narrative follows Parveen Shamsa who, inspired by the work of an American humanitarian, travels to Afghanistan to help in a rural clinic. Once there, she finds the reality is nothing like the success story she read about, and she struggles to reconcile the two sides of her Afghan-American heritage.