A taut tale of female friendship and betrayal.

Set between the 1970s and 2010, I Never Said That I Was Brave examines the complicated relationship between two women as they navigate a culture vastly different from their parents’. Motivated by guilt and confusion, the unnamed narrator recounts the shifting dynamics of her lifelong friendship with Miriam, a charismatic astrophysicist who focuses on dark matter. As childhood immigrants to Canada from Uganda, the girls are able to assimilate (though not always easily). In adulthood, they chafe against the deeply held traditions and expectations of their South Asian community and their own internalized beliefs about women.

As the narrator follows her memories on their unpredictable and unreliable paths, the reader is taken along on a devastating journey, one which blurs distinctions between right and wrong, victim and manipulator, life and death.

TASNEEM JAMAL was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. She has worked as a journalist for over a decade as an editor at The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night magazine and the National Post. She has written fiction and non-fiction for the Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night magazine, the National Post and the Literary Review of Canada. She lives in Kitchener with her husband and two daughters.

WEB: TASNEEMJAMAL.WORDPRESS.COM

TWITTER: @TASNEEMJAMAL

Tasneem Jamal's profile page

"The real beauty of I Never Said That I Was Brave is in its exploration of the ways jealousy and resentment test the loyalties of the two main characters. It’s a sometimes-tender, sometimes-urgent portrayal of the intensity of feelings that abound in some female friendships.” — Winnipeg Free Press