For no particular reason, the book group I belong to has been on a Muslim kick. Four of the past five books we've read--three novels, one work of non-fiction--have dealt with Muslim themes. Three of them were written by Muslim authors. Yesterday, we discussed our fourth, and, for the time being, our last Muslim book, for no other reason than it was time to move on to something new. On its own, each book afforded some insight into the Muslim outlook and experience, and, in one case, how a non-Muslim writer interprets it, but there may be even more intriguing (at least to me) to consider them as a group:

Book One: The Pick-up, by Nadine Gordimer

Gordimer is the South African writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature 1999. She identifies herself as dwelling on the far left end of the political spectrum, and her politics clearly inform her work. Thus, we have The Pick-Up, a novel released to great acclaim in the now hacyon-seeming age before 9/11, when a novel about self-loathing white South African woman from an affluent family could find romance with an illegal immigrant from an unnamed Islamic backwater. He works as a grease monkey in a garage around the corner from her local coffee boite. She has a glamorous but vacuous and emotionally unrewarding job in p.r. She is drifting through life, meeting friends at the coffee shop, enraged by the disparities in her world and despising herself for coming from what, to her, is such a morally deplorable place. He has escaped from some unnamed Islamic desert kingdom, mortified by the poverty and restrictiveness of his land, seeking liberty and success in the West. He sees her as his ticket to a new life in a new world. She sees him as a way to rebuke her own family and demonstrate her fashionable disdain for their values.

At first, of course, the relationship is based solely on lust. They meet frequently, and at first, furtively, in his room for heating couplings. Eventually, she feels comfortable enough to introduce him into her circle of hapless friends, like her, also empty and adrift. He feels uncomfortable with these spoiled, silly people, playing at being downscale and bohemian, disdaining the advantages life has granted them. She, being one of them, doesn't notice his discomfort and is bouyed by having such an exotic, third-world boyfriend. The affair seems fated to run its course when he suddenly recieves notice that he is to be deported. This outside threat deepens and solidifies their relationship, and they resolve to stay together. He wants to stay in South Africa, or go to another Western nation. However, his illegal entry has make that impossible, and, even if they marry, he must return home and apply to immigrate through proper channels. He is bereft at the idea of returning home. She, on the other hand, is delighted at the prospect of a new life in an impoverished desert land.