Scan barcode
A review by balletbookworm
"muslim" by Zahia Rahmani
4.0
"Muslim" is a book that I ran across by accident while curating a selection of Muslim writers for a display at the bookstore. Which, in the most ironic way, plays into the central tenet of Rahmani's novel: that "Muslim" is used as a monolith, a label that erases all nuance. The narrator weaves back and forth between exploring her childhood as an immigrant from Algeria in France, losing and then finding her childhood Berber language, ruminating on the development of Islam, and contemplating the bleakness of an unnamed camp, in an unnamed location of the world, where the narrator has been taken captive because she is a "Muslim" and is therefore suspect of all manner of unnamable things.
The original French edition was published in 2005, so several later references in the book are very directly pointing to the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq at that time. I wonder how the book would be similar or different had Rahmani written the book in 2015.
The original French edition was published in 2005, so several later references in the book are very directly pointing to the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq at that time. I wonder how the book would be similar or different had Rahmani written the book in 2015.