It’s one of the reasons “Ember” is expected to make a big splash on the YA market. Tapping into the grit and fire of current events may be what gives the book its power. “Sabaa Tahir is a strong writer, but most of all, she’s a great storyteller.” Reportedly, YA best-selling author Marie Lu was so engrossed while reading Tahir’s novel that she missed her connecting flight. “One thing I can say for sure: This is a page-turner,” enthused the Huffington Post’s Laura M. She gave up newspapers and resolved to capture in fiction the strength and heroism of the people she read about in news accounts.Įarly reviews indicate she has succeeded. “I wanted to write a book that reflected how hard people fight to hold on to that little bit of hope.” “I wanted to write something that reflected the violence and horror of the world, but I also wanted to reflect the way people fight to survive, even when society wants to crush them,” says Tahir, who took six years to write the book.
The constant drumbeat of harrowing news from abroad, the never-ending tales of coups and invasions and refugees, became her inspiration for this twisting, pulse-pounding narrative targeted at readers 14 and older. The bones of this 443-page fantasy epic, a dystopian page-turner about a young woman fighting for her family against the forces of tyranny, are the blood-soaked stories of death and destruction that Tahir edited as a journalist. I still can’t quite believe this is happening to me.” “It’s a little overwhelming but also very fun. “This debut year has truly been crazy,” says Tahir, 33, a dark-haired woman who is chatty, down-to-earth and modest, despite the fuss being made over her book. Paramount has already snapped up the movie rights in a seven-figure deal, and, according to Entertainment Weekly, foreign rights have been sold in 24 countries. At a time when YA fiction has never been hotter, “Ember” seems poised to be the next “Hunger Games.” After a launch party Tuesday night at Kepler’s Books, Tahir is embarking on a seven-city book tour. The Mountain View resident tapped into those hard-won insights in writing “An Ember in the Ashes,” a hotly anticipated new YA novel that published April 28. As a Pakistani-American girl growing up in rural Ridgecrest, she often felt the sting of racism. As a copy editor on the foreign news desk at the Washington Post, Tahir plunged into the brutality of war and chaos on a nightly basis.
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