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/

I really wanted to like this book. I was intrigued by the concept, where a relatively well-off and privileged Sudanese woman becomes a maid and nanny in London due to circumstances and her choices. How did we get here? What drove her to make such a choice? Was this a story of immigration and lost dreams?
 
Not quite. Najwa was a university student in Sudan, with a family of servants, dreams and her whole life ahead of her. But that is dashed when there is a coup and her father is arrested. The family flees to London, in exile, and her father is then hanged as a member of the previous government. Najwa, her mother and her brother must navigate this new and strange land. We leap back and forth in time, following Najwa when she was in Khartoum and a carefree student to a more serious woman who now covers and goes to the mosque.
 
Overall I found the book to be a struggle. While I was intrigued by the story, wanted to know what happened to various characters after she and her family flee to London, the book was dragged down by a drifting, aimless protagonist. She admits that she never found anyone to marry, never finished school, never aimed further beyond being a maid (even when essentially handed a chance to start over). It was difficult for me to understand why she made such choices.
 
I knew Muslims would did become more religious after being exposed to Western culture at a closer and greater degree, but Najwa's journey just didn't ring true for me. I couldn't follow WHY she would choose to wear the hijab and not take the opportunity to pursue more. I read another review that said that she simply spends her time looking for someone or something to hang on to, and the mosque and Islam was that. I suppose a greater argument about religion could be extracted from these pages, but I just didn't feel the author got there, or anywhere.
 
I can't say I would recommend it. Library if you're interested. ( )

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. ( )