Centered around the rural areas of Pakistan, "Children of Dust" is a memoir that chronicles a boy's coming of age in a fundamentalist milieu, and offers a detailed account of the ways in which people internalize and submit to Islamic extremism and social alienation. It sets forth a harrowing narrative of abuse and violence, an intimate portrait of life at the lower levels of Pakistani society, an exploration of love in a place where both romance and women are reviled, a discussion on the rise of religious fanaticism, and an intellectual reflection on the mental totalitarianism of global Wahhabism. After settling in the US, where he entered college and began evaluating his past with a cri...