I think that Minaret is a beautiful story, but it just didn’t work for me. The others were part of her story but did not seem to exist outside of the narration. This story only focusses on Najwa and I felt like she was the only character that was developed.

It took quite a long time to find out how Najwa felt about events after they had happened, and I still feel like we didn’t find out how Najwa felt about certain subjects even though this book is written from her perspective and is in first person. This book was incredibly slow-paced, I totally didn’t expect that. There was a slave analogy that I found totally harsh, as the main character says that she wishes she was a slave. It’s a harsh reality for her, and for many people around the world, this isn’t a fictional reality but a reality that they experience every single day. And while we as readers learn about her story, we also see how she finds out more about the people that she used to look down at or laugh about, as she herself is now one of them. But there is a huge story as to how she became the person she is. Now she is poor, a refugee, a servant, a hijabi, and religious. Najwa is an interesting character, and the people who meet her in the book don’t realise that she used to be somebody quite different. It’s #ownvoices for Muslim and Sudanese representation. It follows the story of a upper-class Sudanese woman, who ends up living in poverty in London. So when I heard of Ramadan Readathon, I just knew that I had to include this book in my TBR. I had had Minaret on my Kindle for quite a while, but never really had the right opportunity to read it. Written with directness and force, Minaret is a lyric and insightful novel about Islam and an alluring glimpse into a culture Westerners are only just beginning to understand. They find a common bond in faith and slowly, silently, begin to fall in love. Then Najwa meets Tamer, the intense, lonely younger brother of her employer. Soon orphaned, she finds solace and companionship within the Muslim community. But a coup forces the young woman and her family into political exile in London.

An upper-class Westernized Sudanese, her dreams were to marry well and raise a family. Twenty years ago, Najwa, then at university in Khartoum, would never have imagined that one day she would be a maid. 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. Leila Aboulela’s American debut 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 orthodox faith.

Minaret aboulela