The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
by Shubnum Khan

“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous

Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic misfits, seeking solely to disappear into the mansion’s dark corridors. Except for Sana. Unlike the others, she is curious and questioning and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion: To the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects—and to the door at its end, locked for decades.

Behind the door is a bedroom frozen in time and a worn diary that whispers of a dark past: the long-forgotten story of a young woman named Meena, who died there tragically a hundred years ago. Watching Sana from the room’s shadows is a besotted, grieving djinn, an invisible spirit who has haunted the mansion since her mysterious death. Obsessed with Meena’s story, and unaware of the creature that follows her, Sana digs into the past like fingers into a wound, dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone living and dead at Akbar Manzil. Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.

5 out of 5 fairies

This is one of those books that haunts you long after you’ve finished it, much like the djinn lingered in Akbar Manzil. Khan does an amazing job of bringing the past and present inhabitants of the mansion to life, drawing the reader into a mysterious and tragic tale. I will warn you – it can get a bit dark at times, and it will play your heart strings like a concert pianist. I got wrapped up in the book pretty quickly, and it moves along smoothly at a good paced. Highly recommend!

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Shubnum Khan is a South African writer & artist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern amongst others. She is a fellow at Art Omi in New York, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai & she is an Octavia Butler Fellow with Jack Jones Literary Arts. She lives in Durban by the sea.