The White Mosque: A Memoir

Written by Sofia Samatar

Narrated by Sofia Samatar

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?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781696609852

Sofia Samatar

Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She is the recipient of the William L. Crawford Award, the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She teaches Arabic literature, African literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.

Reviews for The White Mosque

[spoko_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was surprised how much I liked this book. It details a history—and a life—at the intersection of so many disparate cultures, and in a way that generates deeper understanding.

[nigellicus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A rather wonderful, thoughtful, sensitive travelogue and memoir about Samatar's travels to a distant and unlikely outpost of her co-religionists. Gently examines themes of identity, race, treligion, opression and freedom, memory and legacy, art and poetry. A lovely book, well-read by the author.

[maryreinert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an unusual book. The author's father was a Muslim from Somalia and her mother a Mennonite. In the late 19th century, a group of German Mennonites traveled to Central Asia (Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan) to do missionary work. They established a Christian village in the midst of Islamic population; their church was called the White Mosque.

This story is about a current trip the author took along with other Mennonites to retravel the road taken by their ancestors in the 19th century. There is much Mennonite history and the author writes a lot about her experiences as a biracial woman and the conflicts and the similarities between Christianity and Islam often with the theme of how much these faiths are alike.

I should have liked this better but honestly at times just couldn't get into her writing style.