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Leila Aboulela

Bird Summons Paperback

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Language

English
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12.8 x 2.6 x 19.6 cm
ISBN-10

147460093X
ISBN-13

978-1474600934
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Product details

Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 147460093X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1474600934
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 270 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 2.6 x 19.6 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #688,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
90 ratings

About the author

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Leila Aboulela

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Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved in her mid-twenties to Aberdeen. She is the author of five novels, Bird Summons, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Leila was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and her latest story collection, Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Leila’s work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was long-listed three times for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her plays The Insider, The Mystic Life and others were broadcast on BBC Radio and her fiction included in publications such as Freeman’s, Granta and Harper’s Magazine.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

90 global ratings

5 star		45%
4 star		18%
3 star		22%
2 star		9%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from other countries

BookWorm

Aboulela always writes well, but this foray into magical realism doesn't work for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

Leila Aboulela is one of my favourite authors - a gifted writer with a great turn of phrase and characters you can really care about. Her writing often incorporates and reflects her Muslim faith in a way that is enlightening for those not of the religion, and reading her novels has given me a much greater understanding of how the Islamic religion influences and enhances the everyday lives and decision making of its adherents.

'Bird Summons' started off really well, introducing three very different women, friends from an 'Arabic speaking Muslim women's' group in Dundee. The there are going on a holiday-slash-pilgrimage together, to visit the grave of an aristocratic 19th century Scot who converted to Islam. The first few chapters I really enjoyed, as we got to know the women and their life circumstances. Salma is the leader, confident and admirable, with a successful career as a massage therapist and a lovely husband and four children. Moni is mother of a young disabled child, her life and identity having been subsumed by her caring responsibilities. And Iman is young and beautiful but wonders what more there might be to life than looking pretty and being a trophy wife.

Then just as I was getting into into, the oddness starts, and the tale develops into a weird magical realist fable. It's based around the old tale of the 'Bird King' - interesting the second novel based around that legend I've read this year, and not the better of the two. The strangeness is geared up chapter by chapter until it's an all out fantasy by the end. There is an underlying message, which I did sort of get, but the delivery just didn't work for me. The problem is that I don't really like magical realism and rarely enjoy books of the genre, no matter how good the author.

If you like - or even don't mind - magical realism then you will likely enjoy the story as Aboulela is a good writer whose words are pleasing to read and whose characters are interesting to know. But if like me you struggle to engage with books where there are no 'boundaries' between real and fantasy, then you might want to steer clear. Try 'Lyrics Alley' by the same author instead, which is a masterpiece.

2 people found this helpful

Humico

Interesting story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 29, 2021

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I really liked the premise of the story of 3 friends who end up going on a holiday to find the grave of Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first western woman to perform Hajj.

But…the magical realism aspect was not for me, and I felt like it was shoehorned into the story and took away from the characters real world problems.

Not for me.

JRS

Wonderfully woven

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 5, 2019

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I really enjoyed the style of the book, the engaging complex characters and the ways they developed. It was a thought provoking story which satisfyingly left questions and a changed gaze.

PinkPerla

An inspiring mystical read

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on June 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

A truly entrancing tale, nothing like I have ever read before. The journey of the three women sparks both relevance and empathy. Though the magic and mystery is sometimes baffling, I find it a refreshing addition to the magical realism genre, with faith and spiritual growth taking centre stage.

Emily - London

Scottish road trip parable with visions

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 12, 2019

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Three Muslim women, good friends, who have made their lives in different ways in Scotland, go on a road trip to visit the grave of “Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first British woman to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, to educate themselves about the history of Islam in Britain, to integrate better by following the example of those who were of this soil and of their faith...” Along the way, their friendships are tested, and each is confronted by challenges to their personal loyalties and lives.

Leila Aboulela is an observant Muslim, born in Sudan, who studied at LSE, now living in Scotland. As her website explains , she is known for her “ distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. Highlighting the challenges facing Muslims in Europe and ‘telling the stories of flawed complex characters who struggle to make choices using Muslim logic’. Aboulela’s work explores significant political issues. Her personal faith and the move, in her mid-twenties, from Sudan to Scotland are a major influence on her work. Literary influences include Arab authors Tayeb Salih and Naguib Mahfouz as well as Ahdaf Soueif, Jean Rhys, Anita Desai and Doris Lessing. The Scottish literary landscape and writers such as Alan Spence and Robin Jenkins have also been influential.”

As an irreligious non-Muslim, I see her as reworking what without a religious content would be magic realism, and making it mysticism. She is full of hope about these three women’s lives, despite their losses and awareness of their own frustrated potential. She looks for them to find happiness in a world where through migration, one of them has lost her professional standing as a doctor; where another loves her acutely disabled, mute son but is losing her identity; and another is rejected by her husband’s family. The hoopoe appears on their journey, from 'The Conference of Birds', and we are led into a world of mythic story-telling, and an almost real world where each woman’s fantasy of what life might be is projected into the here and now and for this brief period is part of their reality.

More deeply this is, unusually in the twenty first century, a novel constructed around a religious journey that explores the intersections and overlaps between Christianity and Islam. It is also very readable – I read it over a couple of days when ill in bed.

2 people found this helpful

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Buy new: $21.86$21.86 FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 4 Ships from: Amazon.ca Sold by: Amazon.ca

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Follow the Author

Bird Summons Paperback

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Frequently bought together

Popular titles by this author

Product details

About the author

Leila Aboulela

Customer reviews

Top reviews from Canada

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$21.86

FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 4

Ships from: Amazon.ca

Sold by: Amazon.ca

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