Leila Aboulela's The Translator

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Notes

1. Shortlisted for Orange Prize 1999 and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award 2000.

2. Coetzee comments on The Translator: ‘A story of love and faith all the more moving for the restraint with which it is written’ (The Translator, flyleaf). Ferial Ghazoul, a respected critic and editor of the bilingual literary journal Alif, writes: ‘[Leila Aboulela's] novel, The Translator, and short stories, Coloured Lights … give a taste of what it is like to be a brilliant writer with a sophisticated commitment to an Islamic worldview’ (‘Halal Fiction’). Another reviewer, Joanne McEwan, writes: ‘How far non-Muslims are able to digest this point will be interesting to see. But the reviews have been a success to date’ (Islam Online, 6 Dec. 2001). This is not to say that the novel has escaped criticism; see Guth, ‘Appropriating, or Secretly Undermining the Secular Literary Heritage?’ 80–82. But the majority of the evidence points to a positive reception by readers and reviewers.

3. In fact, many believe in literature's power to move people and influence behaviour. It is precisely this capacity of literature that moved T S Eliot to call for literary criticism from ‘a definite ethical and theological standpoint’ in his famous essay, ‘Religion and Literature’, and that is behind censorship laws across the world today.

4. ‘Moderate’ here in opposition to fundamental, though both terms are value-laden.

5. ‘Sammar’ means ‘conversations with friends late at night’; ‘Rae’ resembles ra'y, which means ‘opinion’. Sammar is pronounced ‘summer’ by English speakers, its semantics, observes Hassan, obscured by its passage into a different cultural context (306).

6. Beardsley's aesthetic theory is intended to provide the work of American New Criticism with a more secure philosophical grounding. See Alan Singer and Allen Dunn (211).

7. See front cover of 2008 reprint.