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by Krista Bremer
Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer would not have been able to imagine her life today: married to a Libyan-born Muslim, raising two children with Arabic names in the American South. Nor could she have imagined the prejudice she would encounter or the profound ways her marriage would change her perception of the world.
But on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail. He was passionate and sincere - and he loved adventure as much as she did. From acquaintances to lovers to a couple facing an unexpected pregnancy, this is the story of two people - a middle-class American raised in California and a Muslim raised by illiterate parents in an impoverished Libyan fishing village - who made a commitment to each other without forsaking their own identities.
It is the story of a bicultural marriage - and aren't all marriages bicultural? In any marriage, we might discover that our mate is foreign to us, with very different language, memories, and assumptions about home and family. How we respond to difference shapes our world.
Profoundly moving and often funny, this meditation on tolerance explores what it means to open our hearts to another culture and to embrace our own. It is Krista Bremer's unexpected struggle to reach beyond herself, her accidental Jihad.
"Bremer's particular story strikingly highlights the (usually more mundane) cultural clashes and compromises inherent to every marriage or long-term relationship." - Publishers Weekly
"The book's title refers not to her falling in love with a Muslim but her 'own accidental jihad', forcing me to wrestle with my intolerance and self-absorption. Readers with similar mind-sets will want to follow Bremer's 'love story'." - Booklist
"Readers of memoir will welcome this love story about patience and kindness and learning the importance of putting culture first." - Library Journal
"A sweet and rewarding journey of a book." - Kirkus
"My Accidental Jihad is a bold piece of writing (and thinking) by an incredibly brave woman." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Signature of All Things and Eat, Pray, Love
"Utterly absorbing... A beautiful book." - Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
"Lucid, heartfelt and profoundly humane, My Accidental Jihad navigates the boundaries of religion and politics to arrive at the universal experience of love." - G. Willow Wilson, author of Alif the Unseen
This information about My Accidental Jihad was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Krista Bremer is the associate publisher of The Sun magazine and the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation award. Her essay on which this book is based, "My Accidental Jihad," received a Pushcart Prize. Her essays have been published in O: The Oprah Magazine, More magazine, and The Sun, and she's been featured on NPR and in the PBS series Arab American Stories. Her website is www.kristabremer.com.
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