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Published Aug 2021
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
The Guggenheim Fellowship and Whiting Award-winning author Louis Edwards makes his long-awaited comeback with this epic tale of a New Orleans boy whose very creation is so filled with tension that it bedevils his destiny before he is even born.
Spanning from the Deep South to the Middle East, Ramadan Ramsey bridges multiple countries and cultures, entwining two families who struggle to love and survive in the face of war, natural disasters, and their equally tumultuous, private mistakes and yearnings.
Ramadan Ramsey begins in 1999 with the moving (and funny) teenage love story of Alicia Ramsey, a native New Orleans African American young woman, and Mustafa Totah, a Syrian immigrant who works in her neighborhood at his uncle's convenience store. Through a series of familial betrayals, Mustafa returns to Syria unaware that Alicia is carrying his child.
When the baby is born, Alicia names their son Ramadan and raises him with the help of her mother, Mama Joon. But tragedy strikes when the epochal hurricane of 2005 barrels into New Orleans, shattering both the Ramsey and Totah families. Years later, when Ramadan turns twelve, he sets off to find Mustafa. It is an odyssey filled with breathtaking and brilliant adventures that takes Ramadan from the familiar world of NOLA to Istanbul, and finally Aleppo, Syria, where he hopes to unite with the father he has never known.
Intimate yet epic, heartbreaking yet triumphant, Ramadan Ramsey explores the urgency of 21st century childhood and the richness and complexity of the modern family as a shared global experience. It is also a reminder of Louis Edwards' immense talent and fearless storytelling and is a welcome return of this literary light.
"New Orleans music industry veteran and Whiting Award winner Edwards returns after almost two decades with an ambitious globe-trotting epic as luscious and musical as the city he calls home... Edwards...is a rare writer of deep, paternal wisdom, who can find the deeply, upliftingly spiritual element of nearly everything. This will have readers enthralled with the beauty of life, despite all its tragedies and sorrows." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] delightful and intimate modern epic...The narrative voice is highly engaging, often combining humor and pathos in a single sentence so that even tragic events are imbued with lightness. A novel that is as exhilarating as it is moving; a fine achievement." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An immediate global classic, Ramadan Ramsey joins the ranks of Sula, Oliver Twist, and Moll Flanders, as a tale named for a character that invites readers into a world both hyper-local and universal. New Orleans has never been more vivid on the page." - Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints
This information about Ramadan Ramsey was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
The Guggenheim Fellowship and Whiting Award-winning Louis Edwards has published three acclaimed novels, including Ten Seconds, N, and Oscar Wilde Discovers America. Amistad/HarperCollins published the author's long-awaited comeback, Ramadan Ramsey, in August of 2021.
Born and raised in Lake Charles, LA, Edwards attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and Hunter College in New York City. After graduating from LSU, he moved to New Orleans, where he has had a decades-long career as a producer of music festivals and other special events. He is currently the Chief Creative Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of Festival Productions, Inc.-New Orleans which produces the world-famous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (aka Jazz Fest).
Over the past 35 years, Edwards has worked on countless events, including the JVC Jazz Festival-New York and the Essence Music Festival, as well as festivals in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, Los Angeles, Houston, Newport, and elsewhere.
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