The Translator

Aberdeen, Scotland and Khartoum, Sudan, cities more dissimilar than one could imagine, form the backdrop to this finely crafted, tender cross-cultural love story. They are intimately connected through the main character, Sammar, as she experiences the stark contrasts of culture, history and climate. Yet, she remains very much attached to both places. Leila Aboulela builds on her own experience to create the very personal associations between place and character. The author's brief, yet rich, novel is not only a delicate and moving love story, seen primarily from the heroine's perspective, it also touches, in a more general sense, on general human emotions such as longing and belonging, tradition and change, loss, faith and personal growth. Sammar, a young Sudanese widow, works with Scotsman Rae Isles, a recognized Islamic scholar, at the university in Aberdeen: she as a translator of Arabic, while he is the primary beneficiary of her work. Having returned from Khartoum where she had left her small son in the care of family, she hopes to free herself from the traditional constraints imposed on her there. Here, however, she has to come to terms not only with the bleak surroundings of a wet and grey winter, but with loneliness and memories of happier times. The author sensitively captures Sammar's state of mind: as a devout Muslim, she is sustained by her faith, her prayers providing a quiet rhythm for daily life. At the same time there is her growing attraction for Rae, his serious kindness, his extensive knowledge and "otherness". Her feelings are returned, yet remain unspoken until Sammar is about to leave on a home visit to bring back her son. The encounter does not turn out as Sammar would have hoped. Back in Khartoum, her "other" life, absorbed in her extended family, is conveyed with a similar intimate familiarity and social awareness. Will they or won't they... ever get together again? The essential question for any love story is touchingly revealed by Aboulela, totally in tune with her characters and the wider cultural contexts, yet completely unpredictable until the end. "The Translator", Aboulela's first novel, was originally published in England in 1999; the author won in 2000 the initial Caine Prize for African Writing, also referred to as the "African Booker". Reading the novel today, post 9/11 and with the ongoing crisis in Darfur regularly in the news, the novel strikes my as one of a more innocent time past, an excellent example that deals with a level of human intimacy and innocence, of cross-cultural understanding that is more complex to find today. [Friederike Knabe]

The Translator is one of the best novels I've ever read. Leila Aboulela is a beautiful, honest writer who gave me a hundred precious, wise, funny insights into Islam, Sudanese family life and Western culture as viewed by a non-Westerner. It's not just the character of Sammar, whose goodness is striking but not perfect, or the character of Rae, whose opinions made me love him. Her novel had the ring of authenticity and believability, not an easy feat anyway, but especially in the current geopolitical climate, nor among Muslims who wish to show only flawless personifications of Islam. And yet she managed to write a "halal" novel in English. It is a blessing for English speakers who seek to understand Islam through a Muslim's eyes. I also can recommend Ms. Aboulela's collection of short stories, Coloured Lights, and her second novel, Minaret. Inside are all wonderful, genuine examples of Islam and the West meeting, circling each other warily, touching, and being surprised by what they find.

Although I found the story compelling and easy to stay involved in, I couldn't fully identify with Sammar's commitment to Islam nor with Rae's ultimate decision to become a practicing and faithful Muslim. That could be "my poverty," to borrow a phrase from Edward Albee, in the sense of my own unwillingness to live a life of "faith." Still, I appreciated this opportunity to see how a Muslim woman would interpret her life choices and play them out ... what she might think, what she might say. All of that I found extremely interesting. And I found Aboulela an effective writer. Even if not always in total command of English, it's impressive that she apparently wrote this book in English.

This short novel by a Sudanese author living in Scotland is as simple as it is rich, beautiful, and emotionally true. Most other books that I have read about the Moslem immigrant experience* lament the dilution of an ancient culture by modern Western values. But here the influence is in the opposite direction, portraying the immigrant with the power to enrich the lives of those around her. Sammar is a young Sudanese widow who works as a translator for Rae Isles, an Islamist at the University of Aberdeen. Their mutual respect, first professional then personal, blossoms into an unspoken love. But this can go no further because Sammar is a practising Moslem while the study of Islam is merely an academic discipline for the secular Rae. What happens is as much a matter of faith and the nature of belief as it is an account of the relationship between these two people. But that relationship is beautiful, and it results in a love story whose outcome is by no means predictable, since both leading characters are too honorable for short cuts or compromise. It is made more poignant by the social distance between the two and saved from sentimentality by the cold grayness of the northern Scottish city that is its setting. Later, the action moves to the Sudan, and the scenes in Khartoum -- brighter, more colorful, where Sammar is surrounded by an extended family -- have the ring of a very different truth. I do not think I have read any recent novel that has presented Islam in such sympathetic light. There is much that Abouela might have developed into a much longer novel (for example, hints of Rae's involvement with offstage political activity), but book that she did choose to write is a tour-de-force of compact simplicity. *In recent months: Monica Ali's BRICK LANE, Salman Rushdie's THE SATANIC VERSES, and Zadie Smith's WHITE TEETH, all set in London, and Jhumpa Lahiri's INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, set in the United States. Kiran Desai's recent THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS is waiting on my unread pile.

Although I do not know much about the Muslim religion I found the book be well written and have a good story line. It was easy to get into the mind of the main character Sammer and know exactly how she was feeling. I have added bonus of working with a Muslim gentleman who explained some of the religious aspects to me. I would read another book written by Leila Aboulela.