The White Mosque: A Memoir
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- Winner of the Bernard J. Brommel Award for Biography & Memoir (Midland Authors Book Award)Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardA historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identityIn the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return.Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, &“The White Mosque,&” after the Mennonites&’ whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.In pursuit of this curious history, Samatar discovers a variety of characters whose lives intersect around the ancient Silk Road, from a fifteenth-century astronomer-king, to an intrepid Swiss woman traveler of the 1930s, to the first Uzbek photographer, and explores such topics as Central Asian cinema, Mennonite martyrs, and Samatar&’s own complex upbringing as the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in America.A secular pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, The White Mosque traces the porous and ever-expanding borders of identity, asking: How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of the tissue of life, with its weird incidents, buried archives, and startling connections, does a person construct a self?
- Copyright:
- 2022
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 336 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781646220984
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781646220977
- Publisher:
- Catapult
- Date of Addition:
- 11/06/23
- Copyrighted By:
- Sofia Samatar
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Religion and Spirituality
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.