As a genre, fiction, particularly full-length fiction, is a signifier of a fully fledged literature coming into its own; until recently, poetry and memoir were the predominant forms of literary expression by Muslim women in North America, but a critical mass is beginning to form with a flowering of short stories and a few novels by immigrant or second-generation writers.

The novel creates a uniquely expansive, accessible space for empathy on the part of the reader in a way that less expansive genres cannot. At the same time, the reflective, self-analytic…