A contributing reporter for The New Yorker, Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine, Griswold is deft at interweaving historical details with her narrative. Subtitled “Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam,” the book ranges from bombed-out Mogadishu suburbs in Somalia to the Jakarta, Indonesia, neighborhoods where former jihadis peddle Prophet-sanctioned medicines.<\/p>\n
In Africa, she interviews public figures: evangelist Franklin Graham on a visit to Sudan, and Somali warlords with connections to al-Qaida.<\/p>\n
Grisworld does some of her best reporting in Indonesia and Malaysia, where her depiction of the lives of average people caught in the cross hairs of wider geopolitical conflicts is devastating. She writes movingly of indigenous Malaysians who continue to resist conversion by both world religions, in the face of an assault to their environment and livelihoods.<\/p>\n
For Griswold, whose father was the Episcopal bishop of Chicago, religion is personal. Yet she finds her own conflicts as someone coming from a decidedly more liberal faith tradition than the ones she encounters.<\/p>\n