Tasneem Jamal
WRITER
I Never Said That I Was Brave
With a special sensitivity for entanglements of the heart, I Never Said That I Was Brave explores the devastating consequences when those who know us the best, hurt us the worst.
Anuja Varghese, author of the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning Chrysalis
This is a beautiful, hypnotic, and searching novel told with the intimacy and honesty one might find in a cherished friend.
Camilla Gibb, author of The Relatives
In masterful prose, Tasneem Jamal shows us the intricacies of memory and how we shape it to tell the stories of our lives.
Emily Urquhart, author of Ordinary Wonder Tales
In this beautifully written, remarkably intimate novel, the shadow side of enduring friendship is inextricably entangled with its sweetness—evoking a sense of awe for the lengths to which a person will go to be loved, and to love.
Carrie Snyder, author of Girl Runner and Francie’s Got a Gun
“This is what Miriam does to me. Always. She demands my attention. But I don’t understand. There is so much I don’t understand. I am speaking now of things beyond gravitational forces and cosmology. And here we have arrived at my motivation for telling you about Miriam and about everything that happened, from the beginning. You see, if I try to make you understand, perhaps I will understand—not only Miriam’s choices, but also mine.”
It has been two years since her lifelong friend, the charismatic astrophysicist Miriam, has killed her young daughter and herself. The narrator—who remains unnamed throughout the novel—is ready to tell Miriam’s story and, thereby, unwittingly reveals her own.
I Never Said That I Was Brave is about two friends, both childhood immigrants to Canada: clever, intellectually ambitious girls who are able to outwardly assimilate. But in adulthood, fissures—formed by the expectations of their South Asian communities and their family histories—appear and grow deeper and wider as the women navigate a culture vastly different from their parents’.
Recounting the shifting dynamics of her friendship with Miriam, the narrator describes herself, variously, as a “shadow” to Miriam, as “empty space” to Miriam’s sun, as the one in the audience watching Miriam on the stage. But is she the passive observer she purports to be?
Concepts of quantum physics, particularly dark matter and the role of consciousness, serve as underlying metaphors in the book, signaling that the landscape of this novel is unstable, and that the narrator’s version of events should not always be trusted. As she follows her memories on their unpredictable and unreliable paths, we are taken along on a devastating journey, one which blurs distinctions between right and wrong, victim and manipulator, life and death.
From House of Anansi
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In the United States
Where the Air Is Sweet
Engrossing, shocking, beautiful.
The Globe and Mail
Beautifully written and deeply emotional.
National Post
A perfect summer read.
Toronto Star
An engrossing tale of race, gender and family relations.
Winnipeg Free Press
A powerful, vivid story of a family’s search for home and belonging, set against a brutal dictatorship and the promise of refuge in Canada.
Raju is drawn to Uganda by the desire for a better life. Over two generations, Raju and his family carve a niche for themselves and form a deep connection to the land in the midst of a racially stratified colonial and post-colonial society.
Their world is thrown into upheaval when brutal dictator Idi Amin comes to power. The family struggles to carry on until, in 1972, Amin expels 80,000 South Asians from the country. Raju, his children and their children have ninety days to flee as Uganda descends into unimaginable chaos and murder. Forced out, toward the shores of England and Canada, the family must find a place to land and a way to start again, even while the ties of Africa draw them back.
Where the Air Is Sweet is a vivid, engrossing portrait of a family caught up in the larger forces of world affairs. Despite tragedy and displacement, their story is one of hope and resilience, and finally, homecoming.
From HarperCollins Canada
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Bio
TASNEEM JAMAL was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. Her debut novel Where the Air Is Sweet was published to critical acclaim in 2014. That same year she was named one of 12 rising CanLit stars on CBC's annual list of Writers to Watch. Her writing has appeared in Chatelaine, Saturday Night magazine, and the Literary Review of Canada. She worked as a news editor at The Globe and Mail for six years. Currently, she is an editor at The New Quarterly literary magazine and the Communications Officer for Project Ploughshares, a Waterloo-based peace research institute. Her second novel, I Never Said That I Was Brave, was published in September 2024.
Selected
essays and interviews
50th Anniversary of the Uganda Asian Resettlement
This podcast, recorded in March 2023, is part of Walrus magazine's Canadian Time Machine series.
Ottawa Writers Festival Podcast
This is a interview I did with the historian Zulfikar Hirji about Where the Air Is Sweet, and in particular the experience of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972. The podcast was done in conjunction with the Beyond Resettlement Conference hosted by Carleton University in November 2022.
Hagar the Relatable: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel
In this essay I describe the experience of re-reading the Canlit classic for the the 50th anniversary issue (#103, Fall 2018) of Canadian Notes & Queries
On the Question of Diversity in Publishing: We Offer Some Answers
This is a three-way written conversation (borne out of a panel discussion) I had with the writers Ayelet Tsabari and Jael Richardson in issue #145 (Winter 2018) of The New Quarterly
Mummy, Am I white? What I've learned from raising bi-racial children
This personal essay was published in Chatelaine.
She ditched it all to follow her dreams
I spoke with Piya Chattopadhyay about unintended consequences on CBC Radio's Out in the Open
Three novelists humanize the refugee experience in powerful fiction
An interview, along with the novelists Lawrence Hill and Kim Thuy, on CBC Radio's The Current.
We packed up the kids and moved to Tanzania: Then things fell apart
This personal essay in Chatelaine describes what happened when my husband and I followed our dreams
When I was three, the same age as Alan Kurdi, I became a refugee
This essay about the Syrian refugee crisis was published on Huffpost.
Tasneem Jamal: Uganda's Exiled Asians
This is a television interview on TVO's The Agenda about the events described in Where the Air Is Sweet
What Bapa taught me about starting over in a new country
This personal essay, published in The Globe and Mail, describes my arrival in Canada through an image of my grandfather
Events
I Never Said That I Was Brave Launch Party
2 p.m. Sunday 15 September 2024
The Button Factory
25 Regina Street South Waterloo ON
2:30 p.m. Saturday 21 September 2024
Studio Theatre
235 Queens Quay West Toronto ON
7:15 p.m. Thursday 26 September 2024
West End Phoenix Central
3 Bartlett Avenue Toronto ON
7 p.m. 4 October 2024
Arts and Letters Club of Toronto
14 Elm Street Toronto ON
11:00 a.m. 2 November 2024
Balsillie School of International Affairs
67 Erb Street West, Waterloo ON