Triumphant Pilgrimage

Rutter was a prolific British travel writer and novelist who lived part of his life in the British colony of North Borneo, now part of Malaysia. He wrote about the life of David Chale, pseudonym of an officer in the colony, who asked him to write about Chale's conversion to Islam, his marriage to a Malaysian Muslim woman, and their pilgrimage to Mecca. Rutter conducted extensive interviews with Chale and his wife Munirah, and tried to narrate the story of the pilgrimage from Chale's perspective, though his own editorial voice is quite present. The book contains a photograph each of Chale and Munirah as well as a map of the Arabian Peninsula.