REVIEWS
'Rich and swoony...an ambitious delight, with rich characters and some exceptionally lovely writing...This is the start of a major career.'
The New York Times Book Review
'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.'
'A mystery & a love story fraught with heartbreak, infused with Islamic mythology, & written in evocative, lyrical prose. Fans of Isabel Allende & Alice Hoffman will be enchanted with this beautiful book.'
'The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a powerful, gorgeous novel. Shubnum Khan has written a story brimming with evocative prose, well-developed characters, and fantastical elements rendered so realistically you forget you’re reading speculative fiction. This is one of those books I wish I could read again for the first time.'
'Khan’s imbuement of sorrow and shame into the character of moldering 1920s palace Akbar Manzil is only one of the choices that render her American debut a triumph. Her novel is lush yet precise, tightly winding two narrative strands around each other to create a tapestry of love, loneliness, grief, and forgiveness… This foundation of the world’s cruelties melds with Khan’s rhythmic writing to create an immersive and memorable novel. The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is reminiscent of such luminaries as Isabel Allende and Elif Shafak, and the delicious power of its rotting manor will draw more recent comparisons to Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s incredible Mexican Gothic. Yet Shubnum Khan has created a fable all her own, and readers drawn to everything from historical fiction to young adult fantasy will find something to love in this haunting reverie of a book.'
'Dazzling...a magical and richly atmospheric gothic coming-of-age tale...Cinematic in scope and rendered in redolent prose, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a deeply immersive and inventive exploration of the many facets of love, loneliness and grief. Khan’s descriptions of Durban ground the story despite its fantastical elements, making the novel all the more compelling. Fueled by its vivid details, bewitching setting and a colorful cast of characters (including the house Akbar Manzil itself ), this engrossing read acts as a potent reminder that the past does not merely hold the power to hurt us, but also to heal us.'
‘South African novelist Khan blends gothic tropes with Indian mythology in her poignant US debut... Playful and evocative.’
‘Beautifully written with intriguing characters and a storyline that spans time, this subtle fantasy novel mixes historical fiction with dark fairy tales.’
Booklist
‘Shubnum Khan is a spellbinding storyteller. Her subtly spooky debut is a marvelous literary tableau, offsetting an enchanting love story amid the opulent grounds of a palatial manor (once “the grandest house on the east coast of Africa”) with revelations of the mysterious tragedy that led to Akbar Manzil’s abandonment.’
'Khan, making her literary-horror debut, spins a haunted-house narrative around the under-utilized concept of the djinn, a spirit drawn from Arab and Muslim folklore. In the book, Sana finds the century-old diary of a girl named Meena. She then tries to find out what happened to her at the dilapidated Akbar Manzil mansion, now a boarding house for the down-on-their-luck, on the South African coast. But as Sana works to unravel Meena’s mysteries, she is stalked by a djinn through the sprawling house, which is almost its own character.'
'The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years turned out to be one of my favourite reads this year... It has so many intriguing layers: a history of the house from its conception to its destruction, the history of a (however mismatched) family, and a love story, all uncovered by someone who thinks that she isn’t loved...'
ADVANCE PRAISE
'Filled with wonder and colour, the secrets of the dilapidated mansion Akbar Manzil come to life in this rich tale of loss and love. The arrival of 15 year old Sana, who is herself haunted, is the catalyst that revives long-forgotten memories, as well as the spirit that still lingers in the empty rooms. I was enthralled and completely swept away by Khan’s masterful unspooling of family secrets, fatal jealousy, and a love that endures after death.'
Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger
'Haunting and healing, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, with its shades of The House of Spirits and Rebecca, is one of the best books I've read this year... Khan's gorgeous writing lays bare what it means to love, grieve, haunt and, ultimately, let go.'
Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds and Garden Spells
'The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a dark and heady dream of a book, which reveals itself in layers as a gothic horror, a tragic romance, and a classic coming-of-age tale. Hauntingly gorgeous.'
Alix Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Starling House
'Haunting, beautiful, and atmospheric… I loved it.'
Jenny Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy
‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a cinematic spectacular, rife with doomed love and vengeful spirits and a lurking violence always waiting to pounce. Shubnum Khan has written a gorgeous gothic mystery, a fascinating meditation on the nature of forgiveness and time.’
Julia Fine, author of Maddalena and the Dark
‘A cracking novel. I loved getting to know Sana, a curious but lonely girl dealing with loss, and Akbar Manzil, an old mansion groaning with
memories and secrets. As girl and house connect, Shubnum Khan unfolds a devastating history woven into the present with mastery and
poise.’
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of Kintu
‘Shubnum’s magical storytelling creates a dark and luscious mood, where every character is expertly given life. Rich with family and community,
this is a novel full of redemptive love.’
Melody Razak, author of Moth
‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is an utterly intoxicating novel that hums with life. The labyrinthine corridors of the Akbar Manzil mansion swallowed me whole, left me sacrificed to the mercy of its vengeful lovers and desperate spirits. This is a story with two faces, at once a romance and a horror, full of mirth and full of gore. Its pages will leave you breathless, haunted.’
Karina Lickorish Quinn, author of The Dust Never Settles
‘Beautiful, just beautiful. A story – a history really – elegiacally written and filled with everything that makes for an absorbing read: love, intrigue,
conflict, mystique, and so much character. Shubnum Khan’s The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years invites us to examine South Africa’s issues of race,
class and gender through a refreshingly unique lens. A revelation!’
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author of the City of Kings trilogy
'I was completely entranced by this lush, sweeping, gloriously eerie novel. Shubnum Khan is a writer of rare and luminous imagination, weaving a tale of love, grief, and belonging that spans decades and intertwines the worlds of the living and the dead. The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a book that fills the heart but also leaves it aching.'
Violet Kupersmith, author of Build Your House Around My Body
‘The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is as memorable as it is magical.’
Zukiswa Wanner, author of The Madams
'Shubnum Khan has crafted an enthralling tale filled with love and horror, loneliness and humour. She is a masterful storyteller!'
Mohale Mashigo, author of The Yearning
PICKS
A New York Times Editors Choice Pick
LibraryReads Pick
Indie Next Pick
ABOUT
'This sweeping, gorgeously atmospheric novel 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. Now, nearly a century since it was built, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for misfits, seeking to forget their pasts and disappear into the mansions dark corridors.
Until Sana. She and her father are the latest of Akbar Manzil’s long list of tenants, seeking a new home after suffering painful loss. Unlike the others, who choose not to look too closely at the mansion’s unsettling qualities—the strange assortment of bones in the overgrown garden, the mysterious figure seen to move sometimes at night—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 locked door at its end, unopened for decades.
Behind the door is a bedroom frozen in time, with faded photographs of a couple in love and a worn diary that whispers of a dark past: the long-forgotten story of a young woman named Meena, the original owner’s second wife, who died there tragically a hundred years ago. Watching Sana from the room’s shadows is a grieving djinn, an invisible spirit who once loved Meena and 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, awakening the memories of the house itself—and 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.'
ORDER
Bloomsbury (Australia)
Neri Pozza (Italy)
Fabula (Ukraine)
Add it to your To Read List on Goodreads here.
