The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
'Grand and gorgeous and brave.' New York Times
'Lively, beautiful... A richly imagined coming of age treat.' Daily Mail
REBECCA MEETS THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES IN THIS GORGEOUSLY ATMOSPHERIC NOVEL SET ON SOUTH AFRICA'S EASTERN COAST
Endlessly playful and richly imaginative, Shubnum Khan's vibrant debut delves into the transformative powers of love and grief as it explores the legacy of South Africa's complicated past.
Sana and Meena will never meet. They share little beyond Akbar Manzil, the sprawling mansion high on a clifftop above Durban that they both call home. When Meena fell in love with the owner of the house it was the grandest residence on South Africa's eastern coast, its shining marble parapets and golden domes a testament to the wealthy Indian family's prosperity.
Eight decades later when teenage Sana follows in her footsteps, Akbar Manzil stands in ruins, an isolated boarding house for eccentrics and misfits. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten.
But unlike her neighbours Sana is curious about her new home, and finds herself irresistibly drawn to its deserted east wing. As she moves closer to unearthing Meena's story, a grieving djinn begins to stir from its long sleep.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, a mystery and an unforgettable tale of a young girl's search for belonging.
'Filled with wonder and colour, the secrets of the dilapidated mansion Akbar Manzil come to life in this rich tale of loss and love... I was enthralled and completely swept away.' Yangsze Choo, author of The Night Tiger
* A Cosmopolitan 'Best Book for February' *
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South African novelist Khan blends gothic tropes with Indian mythology in her poignant U.S. debut. Sana, a 15-year-old Indian girl whose mother died of cancer several years earlier, lives with her father in an apartment in a run-down mansion in the South African coastal town of Durban. Sana copes with her grief by diving into the story of the house's original owner, which Khan expands in a parallel narrative tracing Akbar Ali Khan's 1919 departure from Bombay to build the mansion and fill it with his family and exotic pets. Akbar eventually becomes dissatisfied with his marriage and takes a second wife, Meena. As Sana becomes invested in the Akbars' love story and tries to discover their fate, she uncovers long-buried secrets about the family. Khan also devotes chapters to a djinn, who has a room to itself in the house and remembers a "dead woman" who once lived there. Despite the disparate elements, the novel coheres as Khan portrays the house's point of view, showing in playful and evocative prose how it responds to new residents ("As the new smells climb excitedly into the eaves... older smells, annoyed, move higher up away"). This holds its own in a crowded field of neo-gothic fiction.
