A meditation on migration of every sort. As a muslim migrant who has chosen life outside The West I feel like Hamid is chronicling the particular world I inhabit more than any other writer I can name. The major story arc is a refugee couple from a country that could be anywhere succumbing to war, […]
Tag Archives: review
Review: Islam and the Destiny of Man
The sensitivity and respect he shows the Christian outlook is a great example to other converts in how to come to grips with their origins. Who we were is part of who we are, and being comfortable in yourself means coming to terms with that.
Review: Salonica, City of Ghosts
“They all claimed the city for themselves in God’s name. But is it not said: Where God is, there is everything?” Nearly five hundred years of history for a city I had never heard of in a land I knew next to nothing about could have been overwhelming, but the book is so well-written and […]
The Years of Rice and Salt
An alternative history where all the Europeans die in the Black Death and the great civilizations of the world are Islam and China. Such an exciting premise. We follow three kindred souls through group reincarnations era after era. The way their essential inclinations and human potentials are encouraged or limited by the circumstances fate delivers […]
Sheep, Honey and Lots of Jews
A review of The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook Soon after the Persian Empire fell to the Companions of Prophet Muhammad (saws), the armies of the Caliphate reached to the Door of Doors, the fortress of Durbent which closes the narrow gap between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the fortress believed […]
Myth of the Lazy Native – Review
An anti-colonial short-course for Malaysians in one volume. The Myth of the Lazy Native was an influential book in post-colonial studies, published a year before Edward Said’s Orientalism[1]. Syed Hussein Alatas trawls through centuries of original sources to find the sources of the persistent idea that Malays, and other native peoples, are lazy. Some of […]
The Souls of Black Folk – Review
By W.E.B. Dubois An old book, over a hundred years old already. Some of the essays have passed from contemporary relevance into historical record, but it is history rarely discussed, from an intimate perspective and the prose hasn’t lost any of its power. Nobody writes like that anymore! The Greeks, the Bible, Shakespeare. The Veil, […]
Commander of the Faithful: Review
By John W Kiser An enjoyable and easy introduction to an amazing life. The book is strongest in the first third, showing his upbringing and describing Algerian society in that period, and in the last third, when his exile and travels involved him in many important and unexpected events. Meeting Imam Shamil the Chechen Mujahid […]