August 1, 2023

In a tumbledown boardinghouse on the South African coast that was once a grand mansion, curious tenant Sana begins exploring, finally discovering a room unopened for decades where the original owner's second wife, Meena, died horribly. Sana doesn't know it, but a djinn who loved Meena and mourns her still is watching from the corner. From an award-winning South African author making her U.S. debut. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 2, 2023
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. Agent: Julia Kardon, HG Literary.

November 1, 2023
Trying to cope with the loss of her mother, Sana and her father move from the farm she grew up on to the coast of South Africa and into the manor house Akbar Manzil. The dilapidated manor house, now converted into apartments, is inhabited by eccentric tenants, abandoned rooms, and secrets lurking behind locked doors. While her father navigates his grief, fifteen-year-old Sana is left to her own devices. The manor is like a living thing, full of curiosities just waiting for Sana to discover them. Interspersed with chapters that tell the story of how the house came to be are stories of the people who lived there and the ghosts of the past that have left deep footprints, like memories the house cannot forget. Sana roams the house uncovering artifacts of the past owners and their mysteries, but Sana has secrets of her own, ghosts that haunt her just as the past haunts this house. Beautifully written with intriguing characters and a story line that spans time, this subtle fantasy novel mixes historical fiction with dark fairy tales.

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Starred review from December 15, 2023
A haunted house full of haunted people is the setting for this lively, moving tale. When 15-year-old Sana Malek and her widowed father move from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Durban in 2014, they land in a once-glorious mansion overlooking the sea, now a ramshackle rooming house presided over by a kindly old man called Doctor. Sana is familiar with ghosts, having been haunted all her life by the spiteful ghost of her previously conjoined twin sister, who died soon after they were separated. So she recognizes that the house teems with them. She forms tentative bonds with some of the place's corporeal residents, a group of contentious older women. But she's more interested in the departed, and she begins to unravel their stories, especially when she finds a long-locked bedroom with diaries and photos that are evidence of a couple in love. In 1919, we learn in the book's second timeline, a dashing, wealthy young Muslim man named Akbar Ali Khan left his village in Gujarat. Eventually he settled in Durban, following an arranged marriage in India with his modern Anglophile wife, Jahanara Begum. They have a son and daughter, but their marriage never warms, despite the spectacular house and gardens he builds for them. Then he does fall in love, with a Tamil girl hired to work in his sugar factory. Meena rejects him, but he takes her as another wife anyway, patiently winning her over until their love catches fire. Akbar isn't the only one in love with Meena; the djinn of the title, an ancient creature weary of the world, is enchanted. But Jahanara's bitter jealousy of Meena will lead them all to a terrible fate. Almost a century later, Sana will put it all together--but will that bring catastrophe? Khan's prose is lush and lovely, her pacing skillful, and she successfully weaves a complex plot with a large cast. A ghost story, a love story, a mystery--this seductive novel has it all.

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Starred review from December 22, 2023

Kahn (Onion Tears) stuns with a multigenerational gothic tale infused with magical realism, set at Akbar Manzil, a crumbling, formerly grand estate off the coast of South Africa that now serves as a boardinghouse. Sana and her father arrive there after suffering a devastating loss. Curious, lonely Sana digs into the mansion's history, discovering the diary of Meena, a woman who died tragically a century ago in the house. While Sana's fascination with Meena's story grows, she's watched by a djinn, a spirit who once loved Meena and has been drifting, grieving and rageful, since her death. Sana is the first of Akbar Manzil's eclectic collection of inhabitants to really look at the strangeness of their home, and the old wounds that her curiosity opens will change all of their lives forever. VERDICT This novel is a mystery and a love story fraught with heartbreak, infused with Islamic mythology, and written in evocative, lyrical prose. Fans of Isabel Allende and Alice Hoffman will be enchanted with this beautiful book.--Lacey Tobias

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