Category: Islam

June 22, 2010

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer ** (of 4)

OK, I admit it. I’m tired of reading books about the evils of Islam. It’s enough to make you think there’s a conspiracy of publishers...

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June 21, 2010

A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua **** (of 4)

The year is 999. European Christians are awaiting the return of the Messiah. Ben Attar a Jewish Moroccan trader packs a ship with his desert...

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June 21, 2010

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers **** (of 4)

A Syrian-American businessman, Zeitoun, rides out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Eggers gives us a vivid view of the storm and its aftermath from inside...

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June 21, 2010

Shia Revival by Vali Nasr *** (of 4)

The first two chapters were so densely packed with Islamic history I am almost gave up on the book, but am so glad I didn’t....

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June 18, 2010

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright **** (of 4)

You know at the beginning the story will end with planes flying into the World Trade Center, but Wright’s recounting makes the book a suspenseful...

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June 17, 2010

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth W. Farnea ** (of 4)

In the late 1950’s Elizabeth Farnea’s new husband traveled to a small rural village in southern Iraq to do graduate research on an irrigation project....

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April 30, 2010

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini *** (of 4)

A bottomless well of hopelessness, despair and background warfare in Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion of the 80s through the American invasion post 9/11. Seen...

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April 30, 2010

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra ** (of 4)

A poetically written account of life under the Taliban extremists of Kabul Afghanistan. It’s written by an Algerian, not an Afghani, with a self-described vendetta...

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April 29, 2010

Snow by Orhan Pamuk ** (of 4)

Ostensibly there is a plot based on the return of a Turkish exile to his small eastern hometown where the national debate about the politicization...

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April 29, 2010

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz *** (of 4)

A larger-than-life father, a household dictator, terrifies his 1920s Cairo household into submitting to his divine will. Divine, in the sense, that his actions are...

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