Deserts and Mountains

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ForeWord Clarion Review

"Comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love can be made since both books are about finding one's self, take the protagonist to various countries, and are very well-written. Though Ali is not drawn to food, he is after answers about love and God. Deserts and Mountains could be the Sufi male's cerebral equivalent of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller."

Following a shattered marriage in Canada, the hero of Deserts & Mountains, Ali Dogan, sets out on a personal odyssey from North America, to Turkey, to Africa, keeping note of his experiences, dreams and reflections along the way. All the while the framework for his journey is the philosophies of Sufism, the inner and mystical dimension of Islam. This is the premise of Yilmaz Alimoglu's engaging and substantial contribution to the contemporary literature of identity.

Deserts and Mountains is a compelling story of one man's search for his identity in a world of divided loyalties. Like the author, Ali is a Turkish expatriate living in Canada. He experiences the anguish of anti-Muslim prejudice in his own home, threatening his marriage to the mother of his two children. He clings to his Sufist beliefs, which the reader comes to appreciate as distinctly different from the jihadist fantasy Islam is portrayed in the mainstream media.

More than just being Yilmaz Alimoglu's debut novel, I have come to see Deserts and Mountains as a personal invitation to explore the depth of the human experience in our modern times. Though the story of Ali Dogan, the main character of the narrative, and his search for the truth and more importantly identity, takes the reader through a variety of different location like the ruins of the Acropolis in Greece, the living edifice of the Calat Al Hambra in Spain, and the pregnant expanses of silence in the Sahara, the real stage where the main character's transformation plays out is in that singular field spoken of by Rumi out beyond all ideas, beyond all duality where the soul lays down, to rest and perhaps to learn as well.