Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam

The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam

The Bones of Grace

by Tahmima Anam
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 28, 2016, 432 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2017, 416 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

From the award-winning, nationally bestselling author of A Golden Age and The Good Muslim comes a lyrical, deeply moving modern love story about belonging, migration, tragedy, survival, and the mysteries of origins.

On the eve of her departure to find the bones of the walking whale - the fossil that provides a missing link in our evolution - Zubaida Haque falls in love with Elijah Strong, a man she meets in a darkened concert hall in Boston. Their connection is immediate and intense, despite their differences: Elijah belongs to a prototypical American family; Zubaida is the adopted daughter of a wealthy Bangladeshi family in Dhaka. When a twist of fate sends her back to her hometown, the inevitable force of society compels her to take a very different path: she marries her childhood best friend and settles into a traditional Bangladeshi life.

While her family is pleased by her obedience, Zubaida seethes with discontent. Desperate to finally free herself from her familial constraints, she moves to Chittagong to work on a documentary film about the infamous beaches where ships are destroyed, and their remains salvaged by locals who depend on the goods for their survival. Among them is Anwar, a shipbreaker whose story holds a key that will unlock the mysteries of Zubaida's past - and the possibilities of a new life. As she witnesses a ship being torn down to its bones, this woman torn between the social mores of her two homes - Bangladesh and America - will be forced to strip away the vestiges of her own life ... and make a choice from which she can never turn back.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The Bones of Grace completes Tahmima Anam’s Bangladesh trilogy. The three novels, which can be be read independently or together, illustrate, through the compelling storytelling and adept characterization of three female family members over successive generations, how historical events impacted their lives and their place in the social fabric of Dhaka and Chittagong since Bangladesh’s independence from West Pakistan in 1971...continued

Full Review (576 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Claire McAlpine).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Ambulocetus, The Walking Whale

Zubaida Haque, the main character in Tahmima Anam's The Bones of Grace, is a marine paleontologist with a particular interest in Ambulocetus, an amphibious (able to live on land and water) cetacean (carnivorous, finned, aquatic marine mammal) that lived over 40 million years ago. Fossils of Ambulocetus are believed to show how whales evolved from land-living mammals, thus its name which comes from the Latin ambulare 'to walk' and cetus 'whale'. It is more often simply known as the walking whale.

Ambulocetus BonesIn 1980, American paleontologist Robert West was the first to recognize, based on the teeth, that whales once lived in what is now Pakistan. A year later, Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan described a whale's braincase from a ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Bones of Grace, try these:

  • Unmarriageable jacket

    Unmarriageable

    by Soniah Kamal

    Published 2020

    About this book

    In this one-of-a-kind retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry - until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider.

  • What Lies Between Us jacket

    What Lies Between Us

    by Nayomi Munaweera

    Published 2017

    About this book

    More by this author

    From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.

We have 4 read-alikes for The Bones of Grace, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Tahmima Anam
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Bluest Eye
    by Toni Morrison
    The story of a black girl in America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others. First published 1970; won the 1993 Nobel Prize.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

Who Said...

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

D to T N

and be entered to win..