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Jameela Siddiqi. The Feast of the Nine Virgins. London. Bogle-L'Ouverture. 2001. xi + 335 pages. L10.95. ISBN 0-9045-2124-9
JAMEELA SIDDIQI WAS A STUDENT at Makerere University in 1972 when her Ugandan citizenship was rescinded and she was one of the Asians expelled by Idi Amin. She has worked in England as a television documentary producer and broadcaster; received a Sony Gold Award for her BBC series Songs of the Sufi Mystics; written about music, including Bob Dylan; translated Urdu Hindi poetry; and produced CDs. Siddiqi s first novel, The Feast of the Nine Virgins, is primarily about the expulsion of Asians from an East African country called Pearl-Churchill called Uganda the pearl of Africa-which "was never home, but was the homeland." The leader of the country after a coup is a Muslim who announces the expulsion of Asians because of a dream. The story is juxtaposed with the making of a movie in England financed by a rich man who was a shopkeeper in Pearl, whose only condition is that a...