The book spans roughly a year in the midlife of a dervish, Nuruddin, in 18th century Sarajevo. He's a respected religious leader who believes in the justness of God and the state, until his younger brother is arrested, taken to the fortress, and killed. The book follows his awakening, in a sense, to human corruption and human connection, both of which have been outside his notice in his conscribed religious life. Nuruddin walks us through the stages of grief, as it were, as he processes what has happened to his brother and the betrayal by one of his own close connections that led to his brother's arrest. As the narrative progresses, he perpetually thinks he is above earthly concerns or in control of them, and yet never -- until the very end -- understands how he is caught up in them. As he learns hate, he unleashes what he believes will be the most terrible revenge for his brother's murder, bringing down all who were responsible for it. And it works: the judge who condemned his brother is killed; the district leader is forced to flee. But the result is that Nuruddin himself is appointed as the new judge. He is put at the center of the political intrigue, and finds that he's no better than those who he brought down.
There's so much more to this book than what I've said here, and I thought I would write more, but I don't think I can do it justice. The first page I marked in this book was page 109. It's a pivotal moment in the book, when we first begin to understand what Nuruddin is grappling with. His friend, Hassan, has come to him to help him hatch a plan to free his brother from the Fortress, but Nuruddin still believes so strongly in the justness of the world that he can't bear to think of trying to break his brother out of prison. Hassan, Nuruddin tells us, "was trying to save a man, while I was trying to save an idea." By the end of the book, Nuruddin is a different man: he knows that the world is unjust; but he is not a better man. Maybe that's the most heartbreaking thing of all.
