This is the story of Iman, a story of a woman who grew up in the countryside in the troubles of 1970s Northern Ireland. She goes to England to qualify as a dietitian in the 1980s. Twelve years later, her world is turned upside down. She leaves a world of comfort and luxury and the cold English husband, from whom she has slowly drifted away to become a Muslim, to enter another world, a world of dangers, deception, and lies. A violent marriage robs her of her two beloved sons and takes them to the cruel, selfish world of her ex-in-laws in Lahore, Pakistan. In deep grief, she continues her professional life and marries again in Saudia Arabia and returns to England. Only to see that also fall apart with the loss of her home in the beautiful Shropshire countryside. She knows that one day, she will pay the price for the suffering, grief, exhausting, gruelling trips to Pakistan and failed attempts to get her children back. When the grim reaper comes for me, she told her best friend from Dublin a few months before the diagnosis came. And when it came, it was breast cancer. How will Iman emerge from this? Does she have a future? Read this written-from-the-heart story to find out.

“A curious, often amusing travelogue of [Sardar’s] quest for understanding and the Muslims he has encountered along his journeys.”—Publishers Weekly Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, learned the Koran at his mother’s knee in Pakistan. As a young student in London he set out to grasp the meaning of his religion, and, hopefully, to find “paradise,” his quest leading him throughout the Muslim world, from Iran to China to Turkey. Along the way he accepts that he may never reach paradise—but it’s the journey that’s important. At a time when the view of Islam in the West is so often distorted and simplistic, Desperately Seeking Paradise—self-mocking, frank and passionate—is essential reading. “Intoxicating . . . upon finishing the book, I turned back and started reading it all over again.”—Kamila Shamise, New Statesman “At once and earnest and humorous, light-hearted and profound, this is a book that displays a sustained capacity for self-questioning of a kind that has few parallels in the liberal West.”—The Independent “This challenging book not only acts as a guide for Muslims but provides insight and clarification for those outside the Islamic faith.”—Financial Times “The only funny book I’ve read about Islam.”—Mail on Sunday

Religious schools in Pakistan are called madrasas. There are two typestraditionalist and spiritualist. Traditionalist madrasas promote sectarian education. Suicide attackers are primarily a product of such institutions. Spiritualist madrasas, on the other hand, teach the softer side of Islam turning students into kind and caring humans. This is the story of two twin brothers from a poor family who are sent to two different madrasas.