"Tender, but unsentimental...Rooted in everyday experience without forsaking the spiritual, told in effortlessly enjoyable style."
-- "Daily Mail"
"A magic carpet ride into the forest of history and the lives of women. Playful, profound, and moving."
-- "Lucy Ellman, author of Sweet Desserts"
"A Scottish-Arabic Canterbury Tales, a quest full of stories and surprises: a challenging storyteller's tour de force, uniting two radically different cultures with a handshake and a kiss."
-- "Patricia Dunker, author of Hallucinating Foucault"
"[Aboulela is] so good with women's interiority, and Muslim women's subjectivity...She gets beyond any cliché or type of the Muslim women."
-- "BBC Radio"
"A wonderful book. I loved the beauty of its language, and the subtle interweaving of myth with the spiritual and physical journeys of the women. I found it fascinating, powerful and profound."
-- "Anne Donovan, author of Buddha Da"
"Engaging and funny and rich in narrative suspense."
-- "Abdulrazak Gurnah, author of Paradise"
"Impressive...Readers will root for Aboulela's well-drawn cast as they reconcile their desires with their faiths and the obligations of their everyday lives. Aboulela's novel is empathetic and insightful, offering a nuanced representation of the three characters through a blend of Islamic faith and Scottish folklore."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"A heady blend of social realism, magic, Middle Eastern folktale, and Celtic myth. Leila Aboulela's is a unique and refreshing voice in contemporary Scottish fiction."
-- "James Robertson, author of The Testament of Gideon Mack"
"Aboulela's exploration of the women's problems of choice, faith, and commitment are as immersive as ever."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
"Each well-developed plot line deepens characterization, while Aboulela's interweaving of Muslim and Celtic fables via the sacred hoopoe bird, adds another dimension to the story and offers a sense of connection between the two traditions and the past and present."
-- "Booklist (starred review)" Leila Aboulela is the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her novels include The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator (long-listed for the Orange Prize), Minaret, Lyrics Alley, and Elsewhere, Home, which won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and now lives in Aberdeen, Scotland.
