Leila Aboulela

"A spellbinding new novel from New York Times Notable Author and Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela about an embattled young woman's coming of age during the Mahdist War in nineteenth-century Sudan. The latest novel by "versatile prose stylist" (New York Times) Leila Aboulela is an enchanting story of the years leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898, and a deeply human look at the tensions between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam,...

"Since her award-winning debut novel, Minaret, Leila Aboulela has been praised by J.M. Coetzee, Ali Smith, Aminatta Forna, and Anthony Marra among others for her rich and nuanced depictions of Islamic spiritual and political life. Her latest collection, Elsewhere, Home, draws us ineluctably into the lives of immigrants at home and abroad as they forge new identities and reshape old ones. A young woman's encounter with a former classmate elicits painful...

History professor Natasha is researching the life of Imam Shamil, a 19th-century Muslim leader who led a resistance against Russia during the Caucasian War. She discovers that Oz, one of her students, is descended from the historical figure and also possesses his legendary sword. As their relationship intensifies, Natasha is forced to confront issues of her own Muslim heritage in the post-9/11 world.

Leila Aboulela's American debut is a provocative, timely, and engaging novel about a young Muslim woman - once privileged and secular in her native land and now impoverished in London - gradually embracing her orthodox faith. With her Muslim hijab and down-turned gaze, Najwa is invisible to most eyes, especially to the rich families whose houses she cleans in London. Twenty years ago, Najwa, then at university in Khartoum, would never have imagined...

Their fortune threatened by shifting powers in Sudan and their heir's debilitating accident, a powerful family under the leadership of Mahmoud Bey is torn between the traditional and modern values of Mahmoud's two wives and his son's efforts to break with cultural limits.

"Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Caine Prize for African Writing, this collection showcases all twenty prize-winning short stories - each with its own unique take on modern African life. A jailer's love poems ghost-written by a prisoner... Love blossoming between two girls despite the horror of their community... Street kids stick-fighting or stealing guavas from the rich... A dystopian world where women must go naked until they marry......