Join a discussion with critically acclaimed and bestselling novelist, playwright and teacher, Uzma Jalaluddin, for her new novel, Much Ado About Nada.
Sponsored by the King County Library System Foundation and part of the Author Voices series.
A delightful new contemporary romance by Uzma Jalaluddin, author of Ayesha at Last.
Nada Syed is stuck. On the cusp of thirty, she’s still living at home with her brothers and parents in the Golden Crescent neighborhood of Toronto, resolutely ignoring her mother’s unsubtle pleas to get married already. And while Nada has a good job as an engineer, it’s a far cry from realizing her dreams for her tech baby, Ask Apa, the app that launched with a whimper instead of a bang because of the double-crossing of he-who-must-not-be-named. Something needs to change, but the past is holding on to Nada too tightly to let her move forward.
One thing Nada is excited about is her friend Haleema’s recent engagement. Haleema insists they meet, and what better opportunity than at the massive Muslim conference in downtown Toronto run by her fiancé Zayn’s family? And did Haleema mention Zayn’s handsome brother, Baz? What Haleema doesn’t know is that Nada and Baz have crossed paths many times before—from when Nada bullied Baz when he was a scrawny kid to the times they met accidentally-on-purpose at the campus library.
At the conference, secrets from the past come hurtling at Nada, complicating everything even further and bringing a moment of reckoning. Can Nada truly say goodbye to what once was, or should she hold tight to her dreams?
Uzma Jalaluddin is the author of Ayesha at Last and Hana Khan Carries On. A high school teacher, she is also a Toronto Star columnist and a contributor to The Atlantic. Her first novel was optioned for film by Pascal Pictures and her second novel was optioned for film by Kaling International and Amazon Studios. She lives in Toronto with her family
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