A well written novel revealing the life of a Sudanese exile in London and the compromises she must make as she rekindles her faith. Worth the read. ( )

I'm not sure whether this is allowed here or whether it is even possible but I'm not sure my article is a review. I would rather tend to call it a personal journey.

Except for Bloomsbury, who has let her down really badly with the edit, this book haunted me for 15 years, the wrestle with myself and my own words took another six months. This is the fruit of the mess of my thoughts:

https://safreachronicle.co.za/where-words-take-us-minaret/

Najwa and her twin brother, Omar, lives come crashing down when there is a coup in Sudan and their father is arrested and executed. Forced into exile in London their rich pampered lives come to an end and things spiral downhill. Omar ends up in prison and Najwa drifts into a life of domestic service and gets religion after a relationship with a fellow Sudanese exile doesn't work out. Najwa seems to find contentment as a fundamentalist Muslim and domestic service. If you're into religion this may be a book for you. However I found the lives of the women, whether rich and pampered or poor and religious very narrow, focused entirely on family, children and serving men. After a while this grated and I would have liked some more complexity to Najwa's character. The crush she develops on the son of her employer, a spoiled and sanctimonious adolescent, and what transpires when he decides they should get married seemed far fetched. ( )

Lent this from the library. To be honest I was bored sometimes while reading this but there were some interesting parts as well. I did not like the main character much. Could not really relate. Not a bad book though. There was something about how it was written that kept me wanting to read more. ( )

Najwa is a privileged teenager in Sudan, where her father works for the President and her mother has a good job. Najwa and her twin brother, Omar, are pampered. They both attend university, but neither gives it their full attention. Everything changes when a coup deposes the president and they seek exile in London. Twenty years later, Najwa is on her own, wearing the hijab, participating in women's meetings at the mosque, and working as a maid for a wealthy twenty-something woman and her younger brother. How did this transformation occur?

The novel jumps back and forth between the 1980s and the early 2000s. Islamic faith is the central theme of the novel – fundamental but not radical Islam. Najwa lost her nationality as a result of the coup that changed her country, and she gradually began to view herself as Muslim rather than Sudanese. Najwa's story is told in first person, and it is fascinating to view the world from her eyes. The only aspect of the book that doesn't ring quite true is Najwa's attraction to her employer's 19-year-old brother based on their shared faith. He behaved like a 19-year-old – sometimes an adult, sometimes an adolescent. It's hard to imagine a 40-year-old woman falling in love with a 19-year-old. I think it would be a good topic to discuss in a book group – what did she see in him?

I particularly enjoyed the book's London setting. I lived in London during the earlier part of the book's time frame and I could picture all the places Najwa went. I often passed the mosque in Regent's Park and it was interesting to accompany Najwa inside a place I've only seen from outside.

I'm not sure why such a reflective book was a page-turner for me, but it's a book I didn't want to put down once I started it. With its focus on the tensions between faith, family, friendships, and lifestyle, it's similar to a lot of the Christian fiction I've read, and better written than most of it. ( )