Librarian and quilter Kathie Enright Boucher recommended BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS, a fascinating historical novel by British author Louis de Bernieres. Finishing all 554 pages in about a week while I work and teach is testament in itself to this compulsively readable, resplendent, fascinating tale set in southwestern Anatolia. De Bernieres expertly weaves perninent chapters about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's remarkable life into the lives of his fictitious characters residing in a rural village at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Rich in vocabulary, BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS is an enchanting story.
Dr. Gill, art historian at the University of Maryland, recommended TRICKSTER TRAVELS: A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MUSLIM BETWEEN WORLDS by Natalie Zemon Davis, history professor at Princeton. I have only just begun reading this history of Leo Africanus who was born al-Hasan al-Wazzan to a Muslim family that moved to Morocco in 1492
