RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksContributes to an important body of literature that speaks to the global conditions forged by US imperialism rather than from the perspective of a given \'ethnic background\' ... It is an astonishing story ... Another author might have written a polite book that begins with the historical context of 19th-century Central Asia and progresses gradually toward her own story as the child of a Mennonite mother and Muslim father, but that is not what Samatar does. She has little patience for totalizing narratives that allow author and reader to remain at a safe distance ... What makes The White Mosque an important book, however, is that its eclecticism and intellectual restlessness are fine-tuned for the purposes of cultural intervention.
