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My grandmother studied medicine in the Forties, which was very rare in Egypt, and my mother was a university professor, so my idea of religion wasn't about a woman not working or having to dress in a certain way it was more to do with the faith.'

'At the same time, they were very progressive.

What does religion mean to her? 'My faith was started off by my grandmother and mother and so I always saw it as a very private, personal thing,' she says. Rather than yearning to embrace Western culture, Aboulela's women seek solace in their growing religious identity. The narrative flicks between Najwa's prominence in Eighties Khartoum society and her present existence as a silent, invisible figure, 'moving in the background'.Īboulela offers a very different portrayal of Muslim women in London from that in Monica Ali's Brick Lane. Her second novel, Minaret (Bloomsbury, £12.99), charts the 'coming down in the world' of Najwa, an aristocratic Sudanese woman forced into exile in Britain by a military coup.