The Imam: A Novel

by Harvey Havel

Overview

Religious leaders and prophets of all faiths have forever struggled with their own humanity in the context of divine circumstance. Centuries ago a long familial line of intellectual and sacred authorities of Shia Islam, the twelve Imams, endured fierce scrutiny and staggering personal sacrifice.

The Imam, a bold, epic tale of the fictionalized life of the twelfth Imam colorfully probes the human hearts of Muslim leaders while exploring Islamic thought. Set in modern Mecca, Lahore, Teheran, and New York, The Imam is a tale of love, hope, tyranny, and betrayal. Two of Islam’s holiest men – one of them the next Imam, who is taken to the United States at birth and kept in hiding there – the second, his open and visible representative, who remains in the Middle East. Two opposite worlds are straddled in a vain attempt to fulfill a divine prophecy, which calls for the holy expansion of Islam into the Western world.

Brought to life by author, Harvey Havel in the context of the modern day and Western world, this religious shocker introduces an Imam who must make sense of his life through a schizophrenic lens. Says Havel, “Through the medium of illness, the Imam attempts to establish his ideal view of the world by using his illness as a tool. He finds a way towards Allah that eschews reality but closely resembles it.”

Harvey Havel was born in Pakistan and educated since early childhood in the United States. He has traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia and has studied both Islam and schizophrenia for the past decade. Havel is also the author of Noble McCloud, A Novel.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940154369623
Publisher:	Harvey Havel
Publication date:	03/16/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

HARVEY HAVEL
Author

Harvey Havel is a short-story writer and novelist. His first novel, Noble McCloud, A Novel, was published in November of 1999. His second novel, The Imam, A Novel, was published in 2000.
Over the years of being a professional writer, Havel has published his third novel, Freedom of Association. He worked on several other books and published his eighth novel, Charlie Zero's Last-Ditch Attempt, and his ninth, The Orphan of Mecca, Book One, which was released last year. His new novel, Mr. Big, is his latest work about a Black-American football player who deals with injury and institutionalized racism. It’s his fifteenth book He has just released his sixteenth book, a novel titled The Wild Gypsy of Arbor Hill, and his seventeenth will be a non-fiction political essay about America’s current political crisis, written in 2019.

Havel is formerly a writing instructor at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. He also taught writing and literature at the College of St. Rose in Albany as well as SUNY Albany.

Copies of his books and short stories, both new and used, may be purchased at all online retailers and by special order at other fine bookstores.