Synopses & Reviews
In 2003 Ilija Trojanow traveled from Mumbai to Mecca: His travelogue, in the tradition of the rihla, one of the oldest genres of classical Arabic literature, describes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam, through the eyes of a Westener, but with the heart of a Muslim.
Synopsis
A moving description of the Muslim pilgrimage
About the Author
Ilia Trojanov was born in Bulgaria in 1965. After fleeing his homeland via Yugoslavia and Italy, he was granted political asylum in Germany. He is also the author of Along the Ganges and the novel The Collector of Worlds. Since 2002 Trojanow has been member of the PEN Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. Among other awards he received the Bertelsmann Literature Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in Klagenfurt (1995), the Marburg Literature Prize (1996), the Thomas Valentin Prize (1997), the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2000) and the fiction prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for his novel The Collector of Worlds (2006).