The Road from Damascus
A militantly secular academic goes to Damascus for family heroism and comes home to find his wife has covered her hair.
Sami Traifi, a stalled London academic and militant secularist, goes to Damascus hoping to find heroic material about his father and finds something else. Back home his wife has started wearing hijab, which he takes as a personal betrayal. Yassin-Kassab writes about faith and its loss from inside a family, with the September 11 attacks arriving midway through, and lets characters hold positions the novel does not endorse.
Recommended by 1 Person
Ziauddin Sardar
The way that travel features in the book is very sophisticated; Robin Yassin-Kassab depicts the internal travel of the characters from one variety of Islam to another, the physical travel of literally going to Damascus, and also spiritual travel as certain characters find themselves spiritually enriched by their experiences.
Interview · November 2009
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