![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reading: Alif the Unseen (85/365)
Mar. 26th, 2021 11:17 amI picked up a second-hand copy of G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen about five years ago, and the bright yellow lettering on the spine has meant that I've kept noticing its presence on the shelves in the room which is currently my office as well as my craft room over the last twelve months and thinking I must get around to reading it, so when a friend recommended it on Twitter a few weeks ago I decided that the time had definitely come.
Alif the Unseen mixes cyberpunky political thriller with Arabian Nights-style fantasy to create a fabulous, many-layered exploration of the Middle East on the cusp of the Arab Spring. The protagonist, Alif, is a young hacker living in an unnamed emirate on the Persian Gulf. When his system is breached by "The Hand", a shadowy government system which has been tracking down and disappearing hackers, he is forced to flee his home and finds himself stumbling into a world of jinn, myth and metaphor, existing just behind the ordinary world he has always known.
This was a less fluffy read than most of the books I've been choosing recently (parts of it are quite dark and unpleasant), but a long way from grimdark. The plot was compelling and, while Alif himself was too twentysomething-male to be a really appealing character the supporting cast made up for it, in particular Alif's next-door neighbour Dina and the sarcastic jinn Vikram. I was also interested by the inclusion of an unnamed American convert, who it's hard not to read as an avatar of Wilson herself (and, by extension, her Western readership encountering this very Arab book and reflecting on the cultural differences which are not always what we imagine them to be). All in all, I enjoyed this a lot.
Alif the Unseen mixes cyberpunky political thriller with Arabian Nights-style fantasy to create a fabulous, many-layered exploration of the Middle East on the cusp of the Arab Spring. The protagonist, Alif, is a young hacker living in an unnamed emirate on the Persian Gulf. When his system is breached by "The Hand", a shadowy government system which has been tracking down and disappearing hackers, he is forced to flee his home and finds himself stumbling into a world of jinn, myth and metaphor, existing just behind the ordinary world he has always known.
This was a less fluffy read than most of the books I've been choosing recently (parts of it are quite dark and unpleasant), but a long way from grimdark. The plot was compelling and, while Alif himself was too twentysomething-male to be a really appealing character the supporting cast made up for it, in particular Alif's next-door neighbour Dina and the sarcastic jinn Vikram. I was also interested by the inclusion of an unnamed American convert, who it's hard not to read as an avatar of Wilson herself (and, by extension, her Western readership encountering this very Arab book and reflecting on the cultural differences which are not always what we imagine them to be). All in all, I enjoyed this a lot.
