The Translator

By: Leila Aboulela

Narrated by: Judith West

Here is Leila Aboulela's extraordinarily assured debut about a widowed Muslim mother living in Aberdeen who falls in love with a Scottish secular academic. Sammar is a Sudanese widow working as an Arabic translator at a Scottish university. Since the sudden death of her husband, her young son has gone to live with family in Khartoum, leaving Sammar alone in cold, gray Aberdeen, grieving and isolated. But when she begins to translate for Rae, a Scottish Islamic scholar, the two develop a deep friendship that awakens in Sammar all the longing for life she has repressed. As Rae and Sammar fall in love, she knows they will have to address his lack of faith in all that Sammar holds sacred. An exquisitely crafted meditation on love, both human and divine, The Translator is ultimately the story of one woman’s courage to stay true to her beliefs, herself, and her newfound love.

©1999 Leila Aboulela. Recorded by arrangement with Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Good enough story

Story was really good, but I was not a fan of the narrator or her accents/ voices. I found her to be slightly distracting and a little too slow.

Narrator just turns me off

I really tried. I read amazing reviews about the author and I am willing to give this a try but not through audio books. The narrator sounds so artificial, so affected trying to imitate accents of Arabs speaking English and Scots or Irish speaking English. It just turned me totally off. I will sure try to read the book.