The Bones of Grace

Anwar told me that it wasn't until he almost died that he realised he needed to find the woman he had once loved. I've thought about that a lot in the last few years, that if Anwar hadn't worked on that building site, he might never have gone looking for Megna, and if only he hadn't done that, I might still be in the dark about my past. I've only ever been a hair away from being utterly alone in the world, Elijah, and it was Anwar who shone a light where once there was only darkness. 


On the eve of her departure from Boston 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.


The two immediately connect despite their differences: Elijah belongs to a prototypical American family, whereas Zubaida is the adopted daughter of a wealthy family in Dhaka.


But when a twist of fate sends her back to her hometown, the inevitable force of society compels her to take a very different path, and before she knows it she’s married to her childhood best friend and discontentedly settled into a traditional Bangladeshi life.


In a final bid to escape familial constraints, she moves to Chittagong to help make a documentary film about the infamous shipbreaking beaches, where ships are destroyed and their various parts put up for sale. 


Here she meets Anwar, a shipbreaker whose story holds a key that unlocks for Zubaida not only the mysteries of her past but the possibilities of a new life—and she will make a choice from which she can never turn back.


Tahmima Anam is an anthropologist and novelist. Her debut novel, A Golden Age, was winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She is a judge for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and a Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now lives in London. Her most recent novel is The Bones of Grace.