Islamic-informed writing has contributed in recent years to rethinking such notions as resistance, modernity and gender, but it has rarely contributed anything that could be critically acclaimed to the literary scene. Leila Aboulela, a young Sudanese novelist, is setting the record straight. Her novel, The Translator, and short stories, Coloured Lights -- written in English and published in Scotland -- give a taste of what it is like to be a brilliant writer with a sophisticated commitment to an Islamic worldview. To say this does not mean that Aboulela deals only with "Islamically correct" characters. There are pork-eating and whiskey-drinking Muslims in her fiction; what makes her writing "Islamic" is not religious correctness or didacticism. Rather, it is a certain narrative logic where faith and rituals become moving modes of living.