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The Good Son
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The Good Son (2010) (edit title/settings)

by Michael Gruber (Author) (edit contributors)

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New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" ( The Denver Post ), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a... read more

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  • “"Possibly, but we're not dead yet. A lot depends on who these people are. Islam is a very decentralized religion. Anyone can call himself a mujahid, a holy warrior. The movement attracts lots of people, from the sincerely religious to the insane or just bored kids looking for action. In the West, they race cars drunk or knock of convenience stores. Here they become mujahideen. At the edges, they blend into simple bandits, which this part of the world had always been famous for, but I don't get the message that our guys are like that."”
    Sonia Baily
  • “"Not at all. I'm perfectly sincere at the moment of prayer in either tradition. Surely you don't think God cares how we worship Him? And a mass, with its ritual motions and responses, is very much the same as salat, in the sense that humanity is one family, whether you call it umma or the Body of Christ, and it's important for us all to the the same thing with our bodies at the same time. Every believing Muslim in this time zone just did what I just did, and as the earth spins around today, so the tide of Fajr will flow with the light of day, and then another prayer at noon, Dhuhr, and then Ashr, Maghib, and Isha, five in all, today and every day. It's a pretty neat feeling, being engulfed in prayer and, despite individual differences between people, to be united in that one thing."”
    Sonia Baily
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • There is absolutely nothing more dangerous in the world than self-righteousness tied to power.
    Highlighted by 45 Kindle customers
  • There was no Afghanistan the way there was a France or a Canada, there were only individuals and families and clans, and the Americans trying to make it different was like assembling a fighter plane out of wet toilet paper.
    Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
  • And the worst torturer is the most beloved of all, the self, for who knows better where the knife must twist to yield the most exquisite agony?
    Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers
  • If you believe in God, you’re inclined to take the world as it comes, rather than impose a system on it.
    Highlighted by 27 Kindle customers
  • “No, I’m saying it’s a Western delusion that all psychological problems are reducible to restrictions on individual freedom. In other cultures, including the one we’re talking about, the highest value is not freedom at all. It’s harmony within the family and the tribe and the sense that the person is doing the right thing with respect to tradition.”
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
  • God, however, is not religious. God is the flame of love. He desires us to love Him as He loves us, but all human things, including Islam itself, stand in the way of this love, for all human things strengthen the nafs. Even fighting to supress the nafs strengthens the nafs. And piety strengthens the nafs more than anything else. I am good, they cry, so God must love me. But there is no ‘because’ with God’s love.”
    Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers
  • The art of bureaucracy is to crawl through garbage and end up smelling like a rose.
    Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers
  • There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, “shattered,” as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there’s a core, and providing they’re willing to do the work.
    Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers
  • As Rumi says, It is right to love your homeland, but first ask, where is it?
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • ‘Terrorism is the rage of the literati in its final stages.’ Al-Qaeda and its offshoots are a disease of modernism, however much they dress themselves in traditional clothing. It’s a kind of toxic nostalgia, which is something the Catholic Church only took about five hundred years to deal with, and we’re still not past it yet. They see the modern world of technology and mass media and libertinism and consumerism, and they both desire and despise it.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
Show all 12 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

The phone rang at a little before one in the morning and I knew it was my mother.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in NPR Summer Books 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Michael Gruber (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Henry Holt
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780805091281
Page Count: 383

Classification edit see section history

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