Alif the Unseen

Publishers Weekly

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Library Journal

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The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times

From the Publisher

“G. Willow Wilson has a deft hand with myth and with magic, and the kind of smart, honest writing mind that knits together and bridges cultures and people. You should read what she writes.”—Neil Gaiman, author of Stardust and American Gods

“[A] Harry Potterish action-adventure romance [that] unfolds against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. . . . A bookload of wizardry and glee.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Outrageously enjoyable . . . The energetic plotting of Philip Pullman, the nimble imagery of Neil Gaiman and the intellectual ambition of Neal Stephenson are three comparisons that come to mind.”—Salon.com

“An intoxicating, politicized amalgam of science fiction and fantasy . . . that integrates the all-too-familiar terrors of contemporary political repression with supernatural figures from The Thousand and One Nights.”—Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post

“Open the first page and you will be forced to do its bidding: To read on.”—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz

“A magical book. The supernatural and sociopolitical thriller Alif the Unseen is timely literary alchemy, a smart, spirited swirl of current events and history; religion and mysticism; reality and myth; computer science and metaphysics. . . . Alif the Unseen richly rewards believers in the power of the written word.”—The Seattle Times

“[An] excellent modern fairytale . . . [Wilson] surpasses the early work of Stephenson and Gaiman, with whom comparisons have already been made. . . . Alif the Unseen will find many fans in both West and East. They will appreciate it for being just the fine story it is and as a seed for potent ideas yet to come.”—io9.com

“A book of startling beauty and power.”—Holly Black, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“Alif the Unseen . . . defies easy categorization. Is it literary fiction? A fantasy novel? A dystopian techno-thriller? An exemplar of Islamic mysticism, with ties to the work of the Sufi poets? Wilson seems to delight in establishing, then confounding, any expectations readers may have.”—Pauls Toutonghi, New York Times Book Review

“A fast-paced, thrilling journey between two worlds, the seen world of human beings and the unseen world of the supernatural.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A Golden Compass for the Arab Spring.”—Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts

“A delirious urban fantasy which puts the unlikely case for religion in an age of empowering and intrusive technology.”—The Guardian (UK)

“Alif the Unseen is a terrific metaphysical thriller, impossible to put down. The fantastical world Alif inhabits—at once recognizable and surreal, visible and invisible—is all the more fantastic for the meticulously detailed Koranic theology and Islamic mythology Wilson expertly reveals. A multicultural Harry Potter for the digital age.”—Hooman Majd, author of The Ayatollahs’ Democracy and The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

“Alif the Unseen is a true chimera. . . . There are few authors who can pull off dealing with religion, dogma, and mysticism as well as sci-fi, and Wilson is one of them. Alif the Unseen contains elements that will appeal to fans of the ecstatic digital visions The Neuromancer, devotees of the mythological richness of The Thousand and One Nights, international-news junkies and fellow hacktivists.”—Tor.com

“Written just before the Arab Spring, this wild adventure mixes the digital derring-do of Neal Stephenson with the magic of The Thousand and One Nights. . . . Alif the Unseen is a rich blend of storytelling magic.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“An ambitious, well-told, and wonderful story. Alif the Unseen is one of those novels that has you rushing to find what else the author has written, and eagerly anticipating what she’ll do next.”—Matt Ruff, author of Fool on the Hill and The Mirage

“Passion, power, and technology converge in this imaginative novel.”—Oprah.com

“Imaginative . . . Brilliant . . . Alif the Unseen . . . draws on Islamic theology, the hacking underworld, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, spy thrillers, and the events of the Arab Spring to weave an ‘urban fantasy’ in which the everyday and the supernatural collide. . . . A first novel that is witty, imaginative, and unorthodox in all senses.”—The Observer (UK)

“Willow Wilson is an awesome talent. She made her own genre and rules over it. Magical, cinematic, pure storytelling. It’s nothing like anything. A brilliant fiction debut.”—Michael Muhammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores

“Wilson manages to keep the various fantastical, technological, political and religious plates spinning without ever losing track of the story, or getting bogged down in polemic. . . .Though Alif the Unseen was recently compared to Harry Potter . . . it has more in common with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.”—The National (UAE)

“One of the most compelling narratives you’ll read this year, Alif offers masterful insight into contemporary Middle Eastern societies whose ongoing transformations are as unexpected and profound as those in our own. It is also a powerful reminder of how far fantasy has come since Tolkien.”—Jack Womack, author of Random Acts of Senseless Violence

“An intriguing mix of fantasy, romance and spirituality wrapped up in cyberthriller packaging. . . . Wilson’s desert fantasy moves at the breakneck speed of a thriller through cityscapes, wilderness and ethereal realms as she skillfully laces mythology and modernity, spirituality and her own unique take on technological evolution. . . . Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind story, both contemporary and as ancient as the Arabian sands.”—Shelf Awareness (online)

“Wilson writes beautifully, tells a great story, and even makes computer hackery seem like magic.”—Sunday Times (UK)

“The real magic of Alif the Unseen is catching a talented writer early in her career.”—Rita Mae Brown

“Outstanding . . . Wilson’s novel delights in bending genres and confounding expectations: It’s both a literary techno-thriller and a fantasy that takes religion very seriously. . . . Alif the Unseen . . . is one of the most inventive, invigorating novels of the year.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“A fantasy thriller that takes modern Islamic computer hackers fighting against State-based repression and entangles that with the fantastical Djinn-riddled world of One Thousand and One Nights. . . . Like a novelization of one of Joss Whedon’s best Buffy episodes crossed with a Pathé newsreel of the Arab Spring uprisings. It’s a page-turner.”—The Austin Chronicle

The Barnes & Noble Review

Months before Tunisians brought down their government, before Egyptians thronged Tahir Square, G. Willow Wilson was working on her first novel, Alif the Unseen, a love story set amid the Internet-fueled overthrow of an unnamed Arab regime. That alone is a nice setup. In Chapter Zero, though, as a man forces a jinn, or genie, to reveal its most secret stories, we see Wilson has bigger plans.

We start with Alif, a twenty-three-year-old hacktivist living somewhere in the Persian Gulf. For the last four years he has spent every waking hour helping his online clients evade the much-feared "Hand of God" ? the nom du terror of the state security police's lead strongman. The son of an Indian mother and an absentee Arab father, Alif finds himself forced to the edges of a society that prizes pure lineage. This hasn't stopped him from pursuing Intisar, a beautiful girl of noble birth. The two have signed a marriage contract ? downloaded from the Internet, of course ? and made love in Alif's bed. As we meet them, the course of young love has gone critically wrong: Intisar has decided to marry a family friend, and Alif is going a little bit nuts.

In a spasm of grief, he builds a botnet that can identify Intisar's online presence simply by how and what she types. It's a tour de force of surveillance software, one that any intelligence agency on the planet would kill to own. He names it Tin Sari, an anagram of his beloved's name, embeds it into her hard drive, and soon has her precise digital DNA. Poignantly, his motivation is less to stalk than to erase her online identity from his view, and vice versa: "By hiding from Intisar so completely, she could not return to him even if she wanted to, and he was spared the humiliation of knowing she would never try."

But the effects are far less personal. Within days, The Hand of God launches a series of attacks on Alif's computer so sophisticated and sustained that it's clear he has found and taken control of Tin Sari. At the same time, Alif is given an ancient book, the Alf Yeom, or "The Thousand and One Days" (counterpart to those fabled Nights), a mystical manuscript into which are coded the secrets of the universe. When Alif and his neighbor and childhood friend, Dina, return home from fetching the book, police are waiting at the house to arrest Alif.

With just the Alf Yeom and a laptop, Alif and Dina take off. So does Wilson's story. With the help of a black market thug known as Vikram the Vampire, whose physical form occasionally wavers into something less than human, they cross into the realm of the jinn, a shadowy parallel universe where they are not necessarily any safer.

Wilson, an American who wrote about her conversion to Islam in the well- received memoir The Butterfly Mosque, is also an award-winning graphic novelist. In that format, text and images vie for attention and require a special kind of concentration. Even without pictures, a similar density in the way Alif the Unseen unfolds sometimes gives this novel a bumpy feel. But this utterly original world, in which ancient folklore is woven with tomorrow's technology, proves irresistible. You welcome each new character, buy into each new crisis, and forgive if the author fumbles the narrative.

Though Alif is the protagonist, Dina is arguably the heroine of the story. An Arab girl who has chosen to veil herself, Wilson gives her depth and strength and dignity. She's the voice of reason in much of the book, and though hidden, never invisible. Here's Alif, falling for Dina as she cuts his hair:

He studied her feet as she shifted around his chair: they were unshod and coated in a layer of the fine iridescent dust of the Empty Quarter, making her seem like a jinn herself. Tendons moved beneath her skin as she went on tiptoe to inspect her work. The sight made Alif ache. He let his hand drop and ran one finger along the arch of her foot, and heard her gasp: the foot danced away. She did not admonish him.

Reviewer: Veronique de Turenne