The Translator

The Translator is Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela's first novel, published in 1999. "The Translator" is a story about a young Muslim Sudanese widow living in Scotland without her son, and her blooming relationship with a secular Scottish Middle Eastern scholar. The novel takes place in both Khartoum and Aberdeen and was inspired partially by Aboulela's own experience moving between these two places. Aboulela refers to the novel and the main character Sammar as "a Muslim Jane Eyre".
The novel focuses on issues of faith, cross-cultural romance, and the modernization of Sudan.
Author J.M. Coetzee has called the book "a story of love and faith all the more moving for the restraint with which it is written."
In reference to the importance of faith in the story, Riffat Yusuf of "The Muslim News" has called The Translator "The first halal novel written in English".
Plot.
After losing her husband, Sammar, a young Sudanese widow living in Aberdeen, struggles to cope. Desperate to go home to her family, she becomes increasingly depressed until she develops a closer friendship with Rae, the head of the department she works as an Arabic translator in at the University of Aberdeen. The friendship soon progresses into a romance, but their love encounters cultural and religious barriers and the two have to compromise to make their relationship work.