Minaret
Represented by Stephanie Cabot
A Book Sense Selection
Longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize
Minaret is a provocative, timely, and engaging novel about a young Muslim woman—once privileged and secular in her native land and now impoverished in London—gradually embracing her traditional faith.
With her Muslim hijab and down-turned gaze, Najwa is invisible to most eyes, especially to the rich families whose houses she cleans in London. Twenty years ago, Najwa, then at university in Khartoum, would never have imagined that one day she would be a maid. An upper-class Westernized Sudanese, her dreams were to marry well and raise a family. But a coup forces the young woman and her family into political exile in London. Soon orphaned, and with her twin brother sent to jail on a drug charge, she finds solace and companionship within the Muslim community. Then Najwa meets Tamer, the intense, lonely younger brother of her employer. They find a common bond in faith and slowly, silently, begin to fall in love.
Written with directness and force, Minaret is a lyrical and insightful novel about Islam and an alluring glimpse into a culture Westerners are only just beginning to understand.
Reviews
“Harbors something remarkable beneath commonplace trappings . . . Lit up by a highly unusual sensibility and world view, so rarefied and uncompromising that it is likely to throw the reader out of kilter. . . . Her delicacy of touch is to be complimented.”–Chandrahas Choudhury, San Francisco Chronicle
“Absorbing . . . Though her writing is simple, even bald, Aboulela has vivid descriptive powers.”–Ella Taylor, LA Weekly
‘she draws Najwa’s odyssey of exile, loss and found faith beautifully.”–Publishers Weekly
“This simple near-parable of a story successfully combines a tale of inexperience and cultural confusion with an insider’s view of the conflicts and complexities within the immigrant and Muslim communities. A low-key, affecting account of one bruised young woman’s search for wisdom and solace.”–Kirkus Reviews
“Clear and precise writing, sympathetic characters, and positive portrayals of Muslim religious practices lend this elegantly crafted novel broad appeal.”—Starr E.