I love this book because it reminds me so much of my Muslim friends, their lifestyle and priorities. Laury Silvers interweaves exquisitely the details of daily life, relationships, religious traditions, and thought processes in the story of a suspicious death. The mystery is solved, but not closed. The resolution is an opening - very "Sufi".

In 10th century Baghdad, Zaytuna struggles to find herself within her Sufi faith. At the same time, a servant boy dies (or was he killed?) and Zay is asked (and feels Called) to investigate.

My very question, before I'd even opened the book was "Why is it called The Lover?" Conveniently, the answer was found in the very first page of the preface, "The Lover" being one of the 99 names ascribed to God within the Muslim faith. It is a central idea of this story in which the realistically drawn characters are either yearning for love, be it romantically, that of a parent who is no longer around to give it, or mourning love lost through war and death. Rather than a story of kings and caliphs, who are the common subjects of works set during the medieval period, The Lover features everyday people—Hadith students, washerwoman, soldiers, and servants, most of whom are at the margins on account of their poverty, gender, the domination of Islam they practice, or even their race, anti-Blackness being as much a problem in the Islamic world as it is in the Christian world.

Zaytuna is a fascinating character with an interesting challenge. Her late mother was a renowned Sufi preacher from Africa, and Zay longs to embody a similar all-encompassing devotion to God even though that devotion in her mother is Zay's biggest source of pain—the fact that she never got to have the simple, everyday love between mother and daughter. It's hard to both love and be loved by a veritable saint, and the absence of this love, as well as Zay having obsessively wanted it to begin with, eats at her and her various relationships with others.

I knew little about Sufism before this book. It seems like a challenging path of the complete sublimation of ones wants and desires to the ecstasy of God's love. I really enjoyed watching Zay's journey, the murder investigation becoming yet another obsession fuelled by her existing one that she grows determined to solve regardless of the negative effect her actions might have on others. And the mystery itself was great, fully steeped in both the religion and the time period. I had so many theories as to what happened but ultimately was unable to guess the culprit.

A lot of backstory and worldbuilding is done in the first couple of chapters, which is beneficial for being able to understand the story, especially for non-Muslim readers like myself. However I did find this part of the book slow going and would have preferred a more interwoven introduction of concepts. However once the main plot gets going it is pacey and engaging, showing us the world through a handful of POV characters and their individual struggles. I look forward to continuing on with this series.

"None of us escapes getting to know each of God’s names, and intimately so. It’s the truth."

This novel takes place in the Muslim Cinematic Universe if that's your kind of thing. A bit too much mushy Sufi stuff for my liking. Nevertheless, a fine "whodunnit" story with twists and turns set in Abbasid-era Baghdad.

The Lover is a fine piece of historical fiction. There is a murder mystery that guides the plot, but it isn't central to the novel. From the very beginning the old world opens up to us on these pages, and we are transported to the streets of Baghdad at the height of its glory. There are various Islamic scholars, Sufis and "ordinary people" just doing their best to survive. The novel is really a window into an epoch from a fresh perspective.

Laury Silvers is a Sufi and an Islamic scholar, and this is obvious in this well-researched book. The religious teachings are wonderfully translated into the narrative and are a joy to read. I loved how this book juxtaposes Islamic spirituality and legal practice - there are very few fiction books dealing with this topic.

Another great thing about this book is that the main character, Zaytuna, is not a stereotypical Muslim woman belonging to upper social classes commonly found in historical fiction. She has a complex relationship with her faith, the memory of her mother and her relationships with men that never feels out of context.

However, I found the main characters unrelatable because despite everything good about this book I never felt the emotional connection to them. I really wanted to love this book more than I did.

The murder mystery part moved really slowly and the whole thing failed to make sense to me. I liked the ultimate message of the story, but I felt the plot was rather weak.

Ultimately, it took me a very long time to go through the novel waiting for the moment when I'm gonna fall in love with it, which in the end never happened.

4.5!

How beautiful was this tale!! I thoroughly enjoyed it.


“I only want to be on the side of God’s Love.”

“My daughter, Love has no side.”