The book is written by a non-Muslim but it gives a better understanding of Islam. It narrates the spiritual struggle of Lilly, the main character, to find identity, peace, compassion and love. It is the story of a person who is torn between the East and the West. This is important as points to one of the themes of the novel. Lilly is presented to the readers as a child of hippy parents. It is the story of a woman, who is the child of hippy parents and is forced by circumstances to take on different journeys in order to get spiritual satisfaction. GradeSaver, Web.'Sweetness in the Belly' is written in the backdrop of Ethiopian Revolution. Next Section Quotes Previous Section Glossary How To Cite in MLA Format Anonymous 'Sweetness in the Belly Themes'. Will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback.

You can help us out by revising, improving and updatingĪfter you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. So she introduces a plea for new order by loudly declaring her Muslim faith in a nation where that is an unusual behavior at best. When she gets to London, there is order, but only because people assume she is like them.

The violence is a sign that the community is striving for a new order, but the chaos of the transition is so dangerous that she must leave to go back to London, even though her life has been set in a different part of the world for most of her waking life. Lily has to evacuate her home in Ethiopia when the revolution begins there. Aziz and Lily are a family, and we know that because when they are separated, Lily is true to him, a sign of her sureness in their love.

This shows that prejudice is unfounded and brutal, and that the sufferers of social rejection can find solace in their own community. Judgment and prejudiceĪziz and Lily have more in common than their consonant patterns of their names they also are inverse opposites: Lily is too white to fit into her community, and Aziz is too dark. Her Muslim faith is her impetus to use her life to improve the lives of those in her community. She knows what it's really like to be on the wrong end of the social hierarchy, and she knows what it is like to be taken from home, to lose one's parents abroad, and when she grows up, she gives her life to social work. Lily's opinions of religion are formed by her experience as a literal orphan, so she understands an aspect of Islam that other people understand through lip-service.

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Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb