The Kindness of Enemies

In a dual narrative, Aboulela (Minaret; Lyric Alley), winner of the inaugural Caine Prize for African Writing, exposes the impossibility of definitively taking sides. In 2010 Scotland, the global war on terror pixilates the lives of history professor Natasha, her student Oz, and his actress mother Malak. They were initially brought together by Natasha's research on Oz and Malak's ancestor, the revered (real-life) Imam Shamil, anti-Russian leader of the Muslim tribes in the Caucuses region. As academic research develops into personal relationships later devastated by outside accusations, Aboulela weaves in Shamil's 19th-century history, from the abduction of his son by Russian royalty to Shamil's retaliatory kidnapping of members of the aristocracy connected to the Russians to his own eventual Russian exile. The resulting expansive, extraordinary saga—elegantly read by Ruth Urquhart, whose neutral voice adroitly avoids judgment—is both an illuminating explication as well as an unflinching challenge to question assumptions, reject presuppositions, and read with eyes, hearts, and minds wide open.