Will Somebody Please Write This Novel?


The dependably inventive G. Willow Wilson has just come out with a novel called Alif the Unseen, which somehow combines gray hat Arab hackers, would-be Islamic terrorists, and troublemaking djinns into a narrative that never feels overstuffed. Alif takes place in an unnamed City somewhere in the Middle East, and Wilson (a longtime resident of Cairo whose initial claim to fame was her memoir about her conversion to Islam) juggles politics and magical realism with remarkable flair. So what does this have to do with Russia?

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