When modern science fails to save his wife Celeste, Michael turns to religion. When religion fails to cure her, he is left painfully searching for answers. 
 
From his grief flows anger, determination, and finally the plan – a meticulous experiment to finally unravel the truth in one of civilizations’ biggest question of all, religion. 

#TheCelesteExperiment #omarimady @VillaMagna_pub #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #literaryfiction

At the heart of this plan is Hamida Begum. A young woman of depth and intelligence, heiress to a lost lineage. Selected and prepared. Qualified in ways even Michael could never have anticipated.  Will her involvement in his vast, mysterious, and at times unethical experiment spell deliverance for Hamida as well as for Michael?   
 
This literary work, with a touch of magical realism, The Celeste Experiment is the story of one man’s attempt to sever the spiritual threads of history once and for all. It is a thrilling journey of revenge and conviction, sorrow and rage, design and entrapment, whispered words. A tale where no one and nothing is vindicated…except love.

My Review

Wow! Just wow! What a fantastic book! The story is beautiful, the writing is beautiful, it exceeded all expectations and then some.

It starts with Michael and his love for his wife Celeste. But when she is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Michael decides he will do anything to save her. Medical science does not have the answer, so he turns to religion, but when that also fails he sets out to prove that if religion can’t save her, then religion must be a lie.

In the meantime, seventeen-year-old Hamida Begum lives with her grandmother in a slum in Kolkata. She is an intelligent girl, who loves to read, and attends a faith school where she can receive an education in spite of their poverty. It is believed that she is the heiress to a lost lineage.

She has been carefully selected and brought to England, where she is mentored first by Miss Patience and then by sheep farmer Charlotte. In the second part of her ‘preparation’, she travels the world with Maurice, who has been chosen to be her companion and lover.

It is all part of the experiment – the one that Michael believes will prove his theory. But Michael’s story and Hamida and Maurice’s are part of the bigger picture of religion and philosophy and spiritual ties, where ultimately the only thing that matters is love.

A wonderful, amazing story, full of rich descriptions and beauty. I could not put it down.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of this blogger readalong.

About the Author

Omar Imady is an uncommon collection of many things – poet, historian, novelist, Syrian, American, exile, Sufi, ‘Alan Wattsian**’, cat lover, avid coffee drinker, insatiable gastronome – all of which find expression in his growing repertoire of eclectic fiction. He is the author of multiple books, including The Gospel of Damascus, a 2012 Book of the Year Award finalist, and When Her Hand Moves, a collection of three controversial, thought-provoking novellas. His forthcoming novels dig ever deeper into the human experience of alienation and the quest for meaning in a world increasingly hostile to answers.  

** Alan Watts’ essential message, and the whole point and joy of human life, as he shared in the preface to his autobiography In My Own Way, was to “integrate the spiritual with the material”. He believed that this could only be done by carving “your own way”, by “accepting your own karma”, and by “following your own weird.”