Suhrkamp Insel

A highly dramatic scene: a father leans over the defenceless boy, the knife flashing in his hand – when, at the last moment, an angel orders him to sacrifice a ram instead of his own son. The biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is well-known. That it caused the philosopher Kierkegaard a sleepless night at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, during which a divine power appeared to him to discuss the question of mercy – this is something only Sibylle Lewitscharoff knows. How the Quran deals with this material in turn, how it relegates Isaac to the background and elevates Abraham’s firstborn Ismail to his position instead, that’s what Najem Wali tells us about.

From Abraham to Eve, from Noah to Satan: powerful writer and theologist Sibylle Lewitscharoff and Iraqi-German author Najem Wali have chosen eight figures from the Bible and the Quran. They each trace their stories from their respective point of view, spirited, enthusiastically, not missing the occasional nod to irony. They wonder about divine justice with worry-stricken Job, about courage and tolerance with Jonah, the frightened whale traveler and with the ensuing dialogue between the world religions, they touch upon the hot spots of our times.

»This book is a jewel, above all thanks to the brilliant texts to which Sibylle Lewitscharoff was enticed on account of the figures selected. You only wish she would bring even more Biblical figures back to life through her linguistic power and imagination.« Wolfgang Huber, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung