the Prau with Silent Soul

Wefada Marwan, an academic, is suddenly thrust into captaining her family's shipping business. At the same time, she must confront a budding romance with her much younger Algerian student, Elemine. As their relationship unfolds, Wefada recalls lessons from her grandparents' marriage to navigate her own. Her grandmother, Fatimah, once fell in love with an Arab man, Ben Qortubi, who migrated to Malaysia and established the family shipping business. Their family grew with the birth of Wefada's father, but tragedy struck during the Japanese invasion of Malaysia, silencing Ben Qortubi forever. With a family steeped in mysteries and losses, Wefada must navigate the choppy waters of protecting her family and their business while pursuing love. In The Prau with the Silent Soul, Faisal Tehrani weaves an expansive tapestry of intergenerational trauma, transgressive love, Islamic philosophy, and the Malayan people's enduring bond with the sea--a force that can be both perilous and sustaining. This is a story that emerges from the sea and ultimately returns to it.