Winner of the 2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
A glorious rollercoaster ride through myth, cyberspace, love and revolution, Alif the Unseen mixes ancient magic with modern adventure to create an extraordinary story. With shades of Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and The Thousand and One Nights, Alif the Unseen is a tour de force debut—a sophisticated melting pot of ideas, philosophy, religion, technology and spirituality smuggled inside an irresistible page-turner.
I will tell you a story, but it comes with a warning; when you hear it, you will become someone else. He calls himself Alif, a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern. When Alif comes into possession of a mysterious book entitled The Thousand and One Days, he discovers a door to another world - a world from a very different time, when old magic was in the ascendant and the djinn walked amongst us. Thus begins an adventure that takes him through the crumbling streets of a once-beautiful city, to uncover the long-forgotten mysteries of the Unseen. Alif is about to become a fugitive. And he is about to unleash a destructive power that will change everything and everyone - starting with Alif himself...
G. Willow Wilson was born in New Jersey in 1982. She has written for politics and culture blogs across the political spectrum, and has previously written a graphic novel, Cairo, and a series of comics based on her own experiences living in Egypt during the Arab Spring. Alif the Unseen is her first novel.
