This is a book from which Annie has read only excerpts. However, she has read a thought-provoking biography of the person who authored/delivered the book. So, if you can identify with the trials and tribulations of someone at a Crossroads, read on. Perhaps this book is for you. If so, Annie can recommend a translation into English...

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According to history, he was orphaned very young; he was raised by an Uncle. Then, a wealthy widow, old enough to be his mother - and already his employer - proposed marriage to him when he was still a very young man. His circumstances were such that he decided to accept her offer. Then, they had to make it work.

She needed him, Annie assumes, because it was not easy to be a woman living alone in her world, and he needed her, because he did not have many other options. His biographer, in the version Annie read, wondered what type of mental illness he was suffering from (how presumptuous can you get - to impose Western medical terminology on an Arab whose life we can barely imagine?), when he started going into trances and reciting the stream of consciousness that became....

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The Qur'an.

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Annie recommends the following translation, written by a scholar who spoke both Arabic and English: "The Qur'an: English Language Edition by Abdullah Yusuf Ali." ISBN: 978-0-7858-4258-3 (That's the number you can give to a bookshop, so that they can get it for you.)

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Annie is also in possession of a version of the Qur'an written in both Arabic and Urdu (she was told, by an Urdu-speaker). She does not remember how she came by such a special book.