The Newlyweds

Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York, for love. A hundred years ago, Amina would have been called a mail-order bride. But this is the twenty-first century: she is wooed by—and woos—George Stillman online.

For Amina, George offers a chance for a new life for her and her parents, as well as a different kind of happiness than she might find back home. For George, Amina is a woman who doesn’t play games. But each of them is hiding something: someone from the past they thought they could leave behind. It is only when Amina returns to Bangladesh that she and George find out if their secrets will tear them apart, or if they can build a future together.

Praise for The Newlyweds

  • The Newlyweds is a luscious and intelligent novel that will stick with you.

    NPR
  • [Freudenberger is] that rare artist who speaks fluently from many different cultural perspectives, without preciousness or undue caution.

    The Washington Post
  • And Freudenberger brings impressive attributes to bear in her attempt to achieve it: a powerful sense of empathy, of being able to imagine what it is to be someone else, to feel what someone else feels; an effective but unfussy writing style that avoids drawing attention to itself; and an international sensibility, which allows her to write about places outside America not as peripheral — mere playgrounds for American characters — but as central to themselves.

    The New York Times
  • Freudenberger moves gracefully between South Asian fantasies of American life and the realities of bone-cold, snow-prone upstate New York — and turns the coming together of newlyweds Amina and George into a readers’ banquet.

    Entertainment Weekly