Kauthar by Meike Ziervogel review – a counterpoint to distorted debate about radicalisation

The story of a middle-aged London woman’s conversion to Islam is full of empathy and subtlety

Overlooked by an emotionally distant father and abandoned by the married man whose child she bears, Lydia suffers a series of betrayals until she discovers the consoling rituals of Islam. Reinventing herself as Kauthar, or “river of abundance”, she devotes herself to jihad, “the inner struggle to be closer to God” – and when Rafiq, an Iraqi doctor, proposes to her, she embraces marriage with spiritual zeal. But following 9/11, Rafiq feels a moral obligation to leave London and return home, and Kauthar learns that her new life is capable of equally painful betrayals, as her faith is contorted into the apocalyptic certainties of a fanatic.

Ziervogel writes with insight and fluency, articulating a profound empathy with those at the extreme reaches of their endurance. Searingly contemporary, Kauthar sketches out a humane and subtle counterpoint to the distorted debate surrounding religious radicalisation, and in doing so is resonant and timely.

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