Landscape of the soul

Though the book is squeaky clean, it takes a brave woman to talk about love, gender and social politics so openly.

The cover has attitude. Oodles of it. A pink-skinned young woman with a bright magenta mouth, sporting pink glares and with a headscarf dotted with tiny pink hearts and camels. The background, if possible, gets even pinker! This ensemble could fool you into expecting candy-floss chick-lit but that's where you're likely to be mistaken. For chick-lit it is and memoir too, but Love in a Headscarf by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is so much more.

The theme is simple and linear, as firmly stated on the cover: Muslim woman seeks the One. As the eligible young Muslim woman telling her story of the big search, Shelina embarks on an endless quest for the perfect life partner and the reader is taken on a wild and hilarious roller-coaster ride. This is a theme that has been done to death by the Austens and the Advaitas of the literary world but the unusual milieu and the author's deft pen open secret vistas into the world of British Asian Muslim women that virtually beg for deeper exploration.

Full report here Hindu