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The White Mosque: A Memoir
A historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identity
In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return.
Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, "The White Mosque," after the Mennonites' whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.
In pursuit of this curious history, Samatar discovers a variety of characters whose lives intersect around the ancient Silk Road, from a fifteenth-century astronomer-king, to an intrepid Swiss woman traveler of the 1930s, to the first Uzbek photographer, and explores such topics as Central Asian cinema, Mennonite martyrs, and Samatar's own complex upbringing as the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in America.
A secular pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, The White Mosque traces the porous and ever-expanding borders of identity, asking: How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of the tissue of life, with its weird incidents, buried archives, and startling connections, does a person construct a self?
In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return.
Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, "The White Mosque," after the Mennonites' whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.
In pursuit of this curious history, Samatar discovers a variety of characters whose lives intersect around the ancient Silk Road, from a fifteenth-century astronomer-king, to an intrepid Swiss woman traveler of the 1930s, to the first Uzbek photographer, and explores such topics as Central Asian cinema, Mennonite martyrs, and Samatar's own complex upbringing as the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in America.
A secular pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, The White Mosque traces the porous and ever-expanding borders of identity, asking: How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of the tissue of life, with its weird incidents, buried archives, and startling connections, does a person construct a self?
Editorial Reviews
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"An enthralling memoir." -Laura Zornosa, A TIME Best Book of the Month
"Samatar, the child of a Swiss German Mennonite mother and a Somali Muslim father, constructs a travel memoir out of acts of pilgrimage. In Uzbekistan she retraces the journey of 19th century Mennonites to Samarkand, where the 'white mosque' of the title-a Mennonite church-leads her to unpack her own identity and sense of wanderlust. What begins as a 'palimpsestic' journey becomes a stunning mosaic of history, memoir and reportage." -Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
"The term memoir doesn't seem capacious enough to capture what Samatar has achieved with her latest: This book is simultaneously a deep study of faith, identity, art, and the enduring power of stories. It is a grand achievement, and with it, Samatar has cemented her status as one of our most alluring and essential thinkers." -Tope Folarin, Vulture, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall
"Few of us can match [Samatar's] education in contemporary Mennonite identity. None of us can make those issues more universal, poetic and prophetic . . . [The White Mosque] should be required reading . . . Samatar makes innovations in the field of memoir." -Shirley Hershey Showalter, Anabaptist World
"What makes The White Mosque an important book is that its eclecticism and intellectual restlessness are fine-tuned for the purposes of cultural intervention-into North American Mennonite culture in particular and the settler-colonial culture of the United States in general . . . If The White Mosque has an argument, it is that these convenient angles of approach will not do. It is as if good reading will reveal the fragmentary nature of everyone-even a prophet. In a manner reminiscent of W. E. B. Du Bois in his biography of John Brown, Samatar sees too keenly to paint the minister as hero or heretic." -Safwan Khatib, Los Angeles Review of Books
"At once an intimately diaristic travelogue, a stirring personal inquiry, and a captivating, meticulously researched history . . . In the end Samatar abandoned any precise formula for moving neatly into and out of others' stories. Instead she built something far more alive: this extravagance of branches and threads and gleaming details, bursting with t...
"An enthralling memoir." -Laura Zornosa, A TIME Best Book of the Month
"Samatar, the child of a Swiss German Mennonite mother and a Somali Muslim father, constructs a travel memoir out of acts of pilgrimage. In Uzbekistan she retraces the journey of 19th century Mennonites to Samarkand, where the 'white mosque' of the title-a Mennonite church-leads her to unpack her own identity and sense of wanderlust. What begins as a 'palimpsestic' journey becomes a stunning mosaic of history, memoir and reportage." -Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
"The term memoir doesn't seem capacious enough to capture what Samatar has achieved with her latest: This book is simultaneously a deep study of faith, identity, art, and the enduring power of stories. It is a grand achievement, and with it, Samatar has cemented her status as one of our most alluring and essential thinkers." -Tope Folarin, Vulture, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall
"Few of us can match [Samatar's] education in contemporary Mennonite identity. None of us can make those issues more universal, poetic and prophetic . . . [The White Mosque] should be required reading . . . Samatar makes innovations in the field of memoir." -Shirley Hershey Showalter, Anabaptist World
"What makes The White Mosque an important book is that its eclecticism and intellectual restlessness are fine-tuned for the purposes of cultural intervention-into North American Mennonite culture in particular and the settler-colonial culture of the United States in general . . . If The White Mosque has an argument, it is that these convenient angles of approach will not do. It is as if good reading will reveal the fragmentary nature of everyone-even a prophet. In a manner reminiscent of W. E. B. Du Bois in his biography of John Brown, Samatar sees too keenly to paint the minister as hero or heretic." -Safwan Khatib, Los Angeles Review of Books
"At once an intimately diaristic travelogue, a stirring personal inquiry, and a captivating, meticulously researched history . . . In the end Samatar abandoned any precise formula for moving neatly into and out of others' stories. Instead she built something far more alive: this extravagance of branches and threads and gleaming details, bursting with t...
Readers Top Reviews
kathleen g
Fascinating look at a lost community mixed with memoir. It's a bit of a mish mash blending history with theology. I learned quite a bit about Uzbekistan and the Mennonites, a place and a religion that were both alien to me. Fair warning that this may seem overwritten at times but it's a good read. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.
