A review of The Lover by Laury Silvers

A review of The Lover by Laury Silvers

The lover by Laury Silvers is a novel with a historically correct Sufical mystery detailing a captivating story of twins Zaytuna and Tein as they confront the legacy of their mother. It revolves around a police investigator and Zaytuna, the daughter of a famous woman duped “The Black Lover’ in Bagdad during the early 10^th century. As confront the hard challenges as they try to solve the murder of a young servant boy,  in the novel, characters shed light on the everyday struggles of Muslim society. It helps us interact with the complex psychological issues of the people of the early Islam days. The novel exposes the reader to the Muslim’s complex ways of life. Through the protagonist Zaytuna, the reader is enlightened on the old Islamic theological debates, race, role of women in early Sufism, mystical movements, social inequities, in relation to social trauma and family. The story sheds light on the part of Hanbali hadith culture in helping men controlling women and their bodies.

In the novel, the social attitudes of the medieval Islam religion to different races, gender, in particular, the African heritage is portrayed. Though the book is about medieval Islam in Baghdad, the book is centred on black characters. The main character is born of a Nubian mother, who is only going by the name by Al-`Ashiqa al-Sawda, meaning the Black Lover, she is loved for exceptional beauty, , in-depth knowledge in spiritual matters and has devoted to loving God. Probably her farther was also not from Arab or black dissent. However, she tries to follow her mother’s legacy and live up to her legacies; she does not come close to it. Her life does not involve the ecstatic love her mother had for God. Although the level of spiritual life lived by her mother was so distinct in the society, it does not save her from discrimination and rape, or her twin from racism. The book illustrates how complicated is the long relationship between black Muslims and other Muslims of different races.

The lover introduces us to the life of Muslim women and their sexuality. Zaytuna’s traits conflict with the religion; she is profoundly stubborn yet very generous. The other woman characters in the book also have brazen sexuality, are fiery, but it all amount to nothing if they have no love from their God. It allows us to see the woman struggle to take control of their sexuality, their bodies and their lives. Too often, people have been told of the life of Muslim women by the wealthy class of women in the Muslim society this narrative never captured the experiences of the working-class women who live in abject poverty and have to face the day-to-day hardships. The book gives a detailed description of the struggle of this group women’s go through in a world where men are the custodians of religion. The women’s dress code and the hijab in the book were of importance to the aristocratic and the rich women yet to the poor it had insignificant meaning in their lives.

We get to see women’s struggles to be involved in religion; Zaytuna’s mother struggles to access sacred places for devotion, yet she was a leader. Aside from these struggles, their various role is highlighted and are far from widely known homemaking, which has been reiterated by Muslim literature. Zaytuna herself grapples with the segregation of women in mosques. In one case she falls victim to the predatory imams who rapes her this shows the how lowly these women are treated in the mosque versus how they are treated in public places or at home

The novel reveals the diversity of the leadership positions in the mosques and how they were formed back in the 10^th century. It also shows how they historically influenced political, social and economic concerns of the community and how the people embraced or silently rejected them. In the investigation of the murder, the details are so precisely placed that the crime novel can be used to introduce medieval Islam to the world. The characters use the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, and the Quran as the anchor of all their reference points’ thought the story. At some point in the investigation, Hadith scholars had to debate the meaning of Mihna and the memory of Muhammad. A former ghazi member is investigating officer finding justice for a dead servant when al-haji conducts his preaching in the open market where al-Nuri and aljunayd regularly push heroin. Often we rely on an old story from the privileged Muslims . Yet, in the book, the setup is vividly described, and just like any other market, there are beggars, debt collectors scholars, drunks, prostitutes, short-tempered preachers and corpse washers. The writer uses mixed race and ethnicity of the characters in the 10^th Baghdad century to illustrate how different race was perceived and its impact on their lives. Its point of how the Islam leaders did not affect the lives of the women, the poor and the black Muslims, yet they lived their lives well drawn. However, the book is a crime novel. It is historically placed and purposely placed that it is a perfect fit to change misguided stereotypes stories about Muslims.

Works Cited

“Laury Silvers’ The Lover: A Review.”. 2019. Site Title. https://rosalindawijks.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/laury-silvers-the-lover-a-review/.

Brodersen, Angelika. “The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon, 2015.” Die Welt des Islams 57, no. 2 (2017): 245-248.

“Four Muslim Women On Laury Silvers’ The Lover: A Sufi Mystery – Altm”. 2019. Altm. http://www.altmuslimah.com/2019/09/four-muslim-women-on-laury-silvers-the-lover-a-sufi-mystery/.