The Silent Minaret, by Ishtiyaq Shukri

Daring in both form and content, this novel of belief and betrayal shuttles between two connected moments in history and two countries linked by their colonial past and globalized present. A young, missing student's friends try to reconstruct his life as they search for him, looking back to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 and to the expat communities of post–September 11 London. What emerges is a picture of a man insisting on a common humanity and finding ways to unify ideologies even as his world is being divided.