BIRD SUMMONS

290pp., paperback, Reprint, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, (2019) 2020

ISBN: 9781474600934

A novel about three Muslim women on a journey in the Scottish Highlands during which they confront their hopes, fears and secrets.

"She's so good with women's interiority, and Muslim women's subjectivity ... she gets beyond any cliché or type of the Muslim women" Arifa Akbar, BBC Radio 4, Front Row

"Leila Aboulela is a constant inspiration to me. Her acute observations, magical realism and fine, flowing prose about women and worlds I know well but had never seen drawn in all their vivid complexity on the page before, are what make me return to her work again and again." Sabrina Mahfouz, editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and in her mid-twenties moved to Aberdeen. She is the author of the novels Lyrics Valley, The Translator, The Kindness of Enemies and Minaret. Her short story collection, Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her short story "The Museum", included in Elsewhere, Home, was awarded the Caine Prize.