September Reads

I was sure I’d read The Translator by Leila Aboulela, but apparently not. I’m not sure why I hadn’t. I’m a big fan of her work, and have written elsewhere on this substack about River Spirit, Lyrics Alley, and Elsewhere, Home. The Translator, her first book, came out while I was still living in Scotland and most of my reading was focused on Scottish literature, plus it’s set in Aberdeen, still a rarity but back then almost unheard of. I know I heard about it. I’m sure I bought a copy. Why didn’t I read it, and where did that copy go? Anyway, that oversight has been corrected. Needless to say, it’s excellent. Reading people’s work out of order isn’t always a good idea since most writers get better with each book, and most writers have a set of themes they tend to loop back on meaning that earlier books can look like earlier drafts. There’s a little bit of that here, as Aboulela’s recurring themes are set out early: the life of the immigrant, not quite accepted in their new home, cut off from their old home; the clash of the modern and the traditional in Sudan; being an Arabic speaker and a Muslim in the West post 9/11. The scope is much narrower here than in her later books, perhaps unsurprisingly for a debut, and at heart this is essentially a love story of the kind that doesn’t often get attention: Not first love, but later love, widows, divorcees, people set in their ways with tons of baggage, with kids, but lonely, in need of companionship and love. As always, I can’t recommend Leila Aboulela’s work highly enough.

And that, dear friends, is it. I had two novel edits for other people to work on this month, in addition to finishing an academic paper, and (as mentioned last week) planning my next novel, so pleasure reading took a back seat. I have been working my way through a doorstop history of WW2 which I hoped to get finished but that was beyond me. After the flood comes the famine. Hopefully next month will be more reading-friendly.