Exile and faith rediscovery structure Minaret’s plot as moral fall narrative

Evidence

Minaret tells the story of the protagonist Najwa’s fall from the elite social strata in Sudan in the 1980s; the loss of her family; her lonely exile as a nanny to a rich Muslim family in London; the tentative romance she begins with the son of the family, leading to her dismissal; and the gradual rediscovery of her Islamic faith. The story is narrated in straightforward prose and in sections that alternate between her past life in Khartoum and present-time predicament in London. We see the blinkered complacency of her pampered youth suddenly shattered by a coup that deposes the regime her father serves, at the same time exposing his corruption and the fact that her family’s privileged life has been built at the expense of Sudan’s workers and the poor. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 478

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Najwa’s privileged blind youth shattered by coup mirrors Changez’s own post-9/11 shattering in The Reluctant Fundamentalist — a comparison point for the reader’s close readings.