The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel
The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel
Leila Aboulela
Grove Press (2016)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fiction, Literary
Fictionttt Literaryttt
“A versatile prose stylist... [Aboulela’s] lyrical style and incisive portrayal of Muslims living in the West received praise from the Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee... [she is] a voice for multiculturalism.”—*New York Times
*
It’s 2010 and Natasha, a half Russian, half Sudanese professor of Islamic studies, is researching the life of Imam Shamil, the 19th century Muslim leader who led the anti-Russian resistance in the Caucasian War. When shy, single Natasha discovers that her star student, Oz, is not only descended from the warrior but also possesses Shamil’s priceless sword, the Imam’s story comes vividly to life. As Natasha’s relationship with Oz and his alluring actress mother intensifies, Natasha is forced to confront issues she had long tried to avoid—that of her Muslim heritage. When Oz is suddenly arrested at his home one morning, Natasha realizes that everything she values stands in jeopardy.
Told with Aboulela’s inimitable elegance and narrated from the point of view of both Natasha and the historical characters she is researching,
The Kindness of Enemies
is both an engrossing story of a provocative period in history and an important examination of what it is to be a Muslim in a post 9/11 world.
**
Review
**Praise for THE KINDNESS OF ENEMIES:
An Amazon Best Book of the Month**
“An absorbing novel . . . reminds us of the complexity of the web woven by those threads of faith, nationality, politics and history.”—
New York Times Book Review
“A rich, multilayered story, a whole syllabus of compelling topics. As a novelist, Aboulela moves confidently between dramatizing urgent, contemporary issues and providing her audience with sufficient background to follow these discussions about the changing meaning of jihad, the history of Sufism and the racial politics of the war on terror.”—
Washington Post
“Our political narrative of the war on terror too often reads like ‘Harry Potter,’ with forces of good and evil neatly and absolutely demarcated. Aboulela has written a book for grown-ups, one whose complexity is born of compassion, that speaks more forcefully than a thousand opinion pieces. By charting the pattern of human folly down the generations, she has done more than breathe life into legend. She has made the story of an obscure 19th century warrior topical and the story of three ordinary citizens in 21st century Scotland timeless.”—Anthony Marra,
San Francisco Chronicle
"Riveting . . . [a novel] about the wish and murmur of lives lived centuries ago— what they tell us and how we exalt them, long for them, look to them to make our existence sufferable and better still, interesting. There is a tremendous amount going on in
The Kindness of Enemies
—but it does not crowd the reader. Rather, it hums in hushed and meditative tones through prisoners of war in historic and contemporary fantasy rooted in reality."—
LA Times
“Radiant with historical detail and vivid descriptions . . . The entire novel is, in many ways, an extended rumination on the complexities of being Muslim in the West, but it is also an invitation to see identity as more variegated than the either/or distillations of the Global War on Terror . . . an excellent historical lens through which to project a complex and, seemingly, contradictory Islamic identity from the past into the present . . .
The Kindness of Enemies
reads as a well-crafted but quiet plea for the kind of humanism that once allowed enemies to respect one another.”—
Los Angeles Review of Books
"Timely, vastly important, and brilliantly engaging."—Bustle, 17 Of January 2016's Best Books To Fire Up Your New Year
"A fascinating combination of Leo Tolstoy’s
Hadji Murat
and A.S. Byatt’s
Possession
."—The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of 2016
“Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies...recreates the fascinating story of the rebel of the Caucasus, Imam Samil, a 19th-century warrior who battled to defend his home against the invading Russians and united the Muslims of the region under his iconic leadership. Weaving the story of his relationship with a Georgian princess he kidnapped into a more contemporary story of mistaken terrorism, we learn much about the nature of loss, the legacy of exile, and the meaning of home at a time in our world when all three are high in our minds.”
—Mariella Forstrup,
The Guardian
Best Books of 2015
"A richly imagined novel about a half-Russian, half-Sudanese professor whose studies of a 19th-century Muslim leader become a portal into his world. The story alternates between two narratives: his in the Caucasus Mountains of the 1830s and hers in the present day.”—
Travel + Leisure
"In this remarkable and highly suspenseful novel Leila Aboulela moves back and forth between contemporary Scotland, where everyone is on the watch for terrorism, and nineteenth century Russia, where Iman Shamil is fighting for his freedom. * The Kindness of Enemies* is a wonderful evocation of faith and fate and what it means to be an outsider."—Margot Livesey
“Aboulela challenges readers with thought-provoking ideas about the meaning of jihad,then and now, and demonstrates how ignorance of another’s beliefs prohibits us from embracing our common humanity.”—
Library Journal
“Aboulela, winner of the Caine Prize, pens an ambitious tri-continental story covering more than 200 years and tackling themes of Islamic faith, personal heritage, and the disparity between academic and personal reconstructions of historic events...a nuanced story of identity and sense of place.”—
Publishers Weekly
"Aboulela seamlessly moves between 2010 Scotland and the stories set in the nineteenth century and shows how complex geopolitical processes can lead to unlikely alliances...an astute exploration of the fluidity of identity that proves just how ineffective a check-the-boxes approach to the issue can truly be."—
Booklist
“Aboulela makes it clear not only that the current conflict between East and West has old roots, but also that "East" and "West" are little more than convenient fictions. . . . . Aboulela is a great storyteller, and she writers with clarity and elegance. A pleasurable and engaging read for fans of both contemporary and historical fiction.”—
Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Leila Aboulela
won the first Caine Prize for African Writing. She is the author of four books:
Lyrics Alley; The Translator,
a
New York Times
100 Notable Book of the Year;
Minaret;
and a book of short stories,
Colored Lights.
Lyrics Alley
Minaret
Coloured Lights
The Translator
The Kindness of Enemies
Leila Aboulela
Copyright © Leila Aboulela 2015
Jacket design and artwork by Anamaria Morris
Author photograph © Ahmed-Naji Mahjoub
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or
[email protected]
.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-8021-2448-7
eISBN 978-0-8021-9017-8
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
15 16 17 18 5 4 3 2 1
For my brother, Khalid Aboulela
‘… we have to grope our way through so much filth and rubbish in order to reach home! And we have no one to show us the way. Homesickness is our only guide.’
—
Steppenwolf,
Herman Hesse
‘That the soul should be open to the Divine Light, even with so small an opening as to allow only a glimmer to pass through, was enough to satisfy the utmost aspirations and capabilities of the vast majority for the rest of their life on earth. It remained for them to treasure what they had gained and to consolidate it …’
—A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century,
Martin Lings
C
ONTENTS
4. D
ARGO, THE
C
AUCASUS
, J
UNE
1854
2. D
ARGO, THE
C
AUCASUS
, S
EPTEMBER
1854
3. D
ARGO
, T
HE
C
AUCASUS
, O
CTOBER
1854
2. D
ARGO, THE
C
AUCASUS
, N
OVEMBER
1854
3. K
HASAVYURT, THE FRONTIER OF
S
HAMIL’S TERRITORY
, F
EBRUARY
1855