by Amy Waldman
Like the cypress tree, which holds its head high and is free within the confines of a garden, I, too, feel free in this world, and I am not bound by its attachments.
—an unidentified Pashto poet
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you:
Bill Clegg and Courtney Hodell
The American Academy in Berlin, Ledig House International Writers Residency, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room at the New York Public Library
Lorraine Adams, Katherine Boo, Chloe Breyer, Rodrigo Corral, Kimberly Cutter, Shaun Dolan, Jonathan Galassi, Scott Glass, Eliza Griswold, Juliette Kayyem, Mark Krotov, Mark Laird, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Ratish Nanda, Philip Nobel, Rachel Nolan, Asad Raza, Sarah Sayeed, Jeff Seroy, Mohammad Shaheer, Lisa Silverman, Brenda Star, Sarah Sze, Sarita Varma, Abdul Waheed Wafa, Don Waldman, Marilyn Waldman
Oliver and Theodora, and Alex most of all
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Waldman was co-chief of the South Asia bureau of The New York Times and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic and the Boston Review and is anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. She lives in Brooklyn.
For sources of information and inspiration for The Submission, please see www.thesubmissionnovel.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2011 by Amy Waldman
All rights reserved
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott
eISBN 9781429958288
First eBook Edition : June 2011
First edition, 2011
The poem quoted in the epigraph is from The Afghans, by Mohammed Ali, Kabul, 1969.
Portions of this novel have previously been published in slightly different form in The Atlantic.
Waldman, Amy, 1969—
The submission / Amy Waldman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Social aspects—
Fiction. 2. Memorials—Designs and plans—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3623.A35675S83 2011
813’.6—dc22
2011007509