The Night of the Mi'raj - Zoë Ferraris

[goodreads]

Title: The Night of the Mi'raj (aka "Finding Nouf")
Author: Zoë Ferraris
Genre: Crime, cultural
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 356
Date read: October, 2010

When Nouf ash-Shrawi, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Saudi dynasty, disappears from her home in Jeddah just days before her arranged marriage, desert guide Nayir is asked to bring her home.

But when Nouf's battered body is found, Nayir feels compelled to uncover the disturbing truth, travelling away from the endless desert to the vast city of Jeddah, where, most troubling of all, he finds himself having to work closely with Katya Hijazi, a forensic scientist. The further into the investigation he goes, the more Nayir begins to question his loyalties: to his friends, faith and culture.

I'm not usually a big fan mystery/crime/detective novels. They have to be really good - or at least "just right" for me to care much about them. As crime stories go, I'd have to say that this was just "okay". Though I understand the reasoning, I think it was a mistake to tell the story from Nayir's view point. Since Nouf was dead by the beginning of the book, the reader couldn't get to care about her, and therefore didn't need the closure of discovering her murder, and as Nayir didn't know enough about her to care for her either, the motivation to solve the murder was secondhand at best, and made it really difficult to relate or even care whether or not we found the murderer. Sure, I was curious, but that was about it.

But as always it was fascinating to read a book that takes place in a culture so foreign to what I'm used to, so Zoê Ferraris still managed to keep me interested by the atmosphere, even though I was somewhat indifferent to the plot.