What Changes Everything

Masha Hamilton’s fifth novel, The Engagement of Strangers, is truly an American story, an exploration of our twisted, misguided, generous relationship with an enigmatic country. And it is told by a novelist of extraordinary talent who currently works in Afghanistan.

The Engagement of Strangers is the story of Clarissa who, in a gamble to save her kidnapped husband’s life, makes the best decisions she can in the dark nights of Brooklyn, boldly rejecting the advice of US authorities and against the wishes of her husband’s grown daughter. It is also the story of Stela, who owns a used bookstore in Ohio and writes letter after letter in hopes both of comprehending the loss of a son on an Afghan battlefield and of connecting with son who abandoned her in anger when his brother died. It is the story of Mandy, the mother of a gravely wounded soldier from Texas, a mother deeply saddened but somehow hopeful who travels to Kabul to heal wounds of several kinds. It is the story of Danil, an angry Brooklyn street artist whose life was derailed by a loss in this incomprehensible war half a world away. And it’s the story of Todd, a career aid worker who for a moment let down his guard in a Kabul marketplace and now must confront his worst fears. The lives of these characters become braided together in a novel about the grace of family.

At the same time, though The Engagement of Strangers is also the story of two Afghans who reveal to us the complexity of their country and the emotions that hold it together and threaten to fracture it. One is the true story of Najibullah, president of Afghanistan during the Communist era who was held captive at UN headquarters in Kabul until invading Taliban forces tortured and brutally executed him. The letters from Najibullah to his three daughters separate the novel’s sections are imagined, but the author had the privilege of lengthy exchanges by email with one of his daughters, who shared pages of recollections of her father and a poem her mother had written about him. The other Afghan in the novel is Amin—a fictional character, unlike Najib—who as a boy tried to save Najibullah and failed, and who now risks his own life in a driven effort to help Todd.