The Bones of Grace by Bangladeshi author Tahmima Anam is a beautiful yet sad love story moving from Boston to Bangladesh, as Zubaida, a graduate student in Archeology at Harvard, falls in love with Elijah on the eve of her departure to a dig on the other side of the world.

She ends up back home in Dhaka, married to her childhood sweetheart; then accepts a job in Chittagong to work on a documentary about the brutal lives of the workers who salvage parts from ships that are beached there once decommissioned.

Anam’s writing is so lyrical and poetic, the images she draws so beautiful, I was completely transported and didn’t want this book to end. She touches on issues of identity, family, where we come from, where we belong, obedience and freedom. Highly recommended.