The Silent Minaret

by Ishtiyaq Shukri

Daring in both form and content, this novel of belief and betrayal shuttles between two connected moments in history and two countries linked by their colonial past and globalized present. The friends of a young student who has gone missing try to reconstruct his life as they search for him, and what emerges is a picture of a man insisting on a common humanity and finding ways to unify ideologies even as his world is being divided.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, South Africa

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if you can get this one here, I picked it up in South Africa.

This book is (sigh, dreamy look) everything. I have read it so many times, you can tell my copy is much loved. Just read it. WARNING: It will grab hold of your soul and you will never ever forget the emotion conveyed by the text. Words cannot even describe...

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A South African student goes missing in London, and his friend, who was brought up with him, travels with the UK, in the hope of finding him. As he travels, and as he meets people who knew his friend, he, and they, reflect on his life and their friendship.

The book tries to establish the character of the missing student, Issa, through the eyes of those who knew him, and as they recall him, they learn things about themselves. Many of the memories are partial and distorted, and some questions in the reader's mind are not satisfactorily dealt with. In a way that is inevitable, if the reader is to follow the path of the characters, which means wandering with them in the ignorance of their search, but they also knew themselves and their own relationships, and at some points in the story not enough is revealed about those characters to enable the reader to follow.

One of the reasons that I liked the book was that it reflected a period I have lived through, and so the story of the characters is in a sense my story. I have memories of several events that they experienced, and so became more engaged in the story. Perhaps non-South African readers might find it more difficult.

[Corey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was sorely disappointed by this book. It started out beautifully and pulled me in right away, but in the end it skimmed over the truly interesting parts (like the relationship between the two women and their two children), and instead the focus was so overly-emotional and historically inaccurate that it almost read like propaganda. I mean, what is the connection between apartheid and 9/11 or apartheid and the war in Iraq? They each carry their own significance and drawing parallels between them belittles the sacrifice of those who suffered in each case. And equating the Jews' return to Israel with Jan van Riebeeck's arrival at the Cape...ouch. That's just offensive and has no basis in historical fact. If you really want to start making haphazard analogies between historical events then why not equate the Jews' arrival in Israel with the difaqane? Resources were tight, a militaristic power rose and someone had to be crushed or pushed out. Those who were pushed out settled somewhere new and the cycle continues.