Minaret: A Novel

Leila Aboulela’s American debut is a provocative, well timed, and interesting novel a few younger Muslim girl — as soon as privileged and secular in her fatherland and now impoverished in London — steadily embracing her orthodox religion. Along with her Muslim hijab and down-turned gaze, Najwa is invisible to most eyes, particularly to the wealthy households whose homes she cleans in London. Twenty years in the past, Najwa, then at college in Khartoum, would by no means have imagined that in the future she can be a maid. An upper-class Westernized Sudanese, her goals have been to marry effectively and lift a household. However a coup forces the younger girl and her household into political exile in London. Quickly orphaned, she finds solace and companionship inside the Muslim neighborhood. Then Najwa meets Tamer, the extreme, lonely youthful brother of her employer. They discover a frequent bond in religion and slowly, silently, start to fall in love. Written with directness and drive,
Minaret is a lyric and insightful novel about Islam and an alluring glimpse right into a tradition Westerners are solely simply starting to grasp.