The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE
"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
AN INDIE NEXT PICK
A LIBRARY READS PICK
“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.
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Community Reviews
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years takes readers on a dark road with paths to the future and the past revolving around the occupants of the Akbar manor of the South African coast in Durban. Sona, a lonely and quiet teenager, haunted by a manifestation of her twin sister who passed, is drawn to the dark corners of the house. The grown-up tenants of the manor flutter about and squabble with each other but the secrets in the shadows feed her curiosity to learn more about its history.
Unaware that she has caught the attention of the dark presence in the house's attic. Discovering mementos of the past begin to change Sona bit by bit and her admiration for the manor and its occupant evolves. But so does the presence that's lurked in the shadows.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years was a slow-paced book steeped in gothic horror, anglophile colonization and racism that's inflated by the bigotry of the caste system. I cannot talk too much about Meena's life since it is the root of the mystery of this book. But I will say that Meena fell in love with a man named Akbar; it was unexpected, powerful, pure and bright. Meena was a smart, brave and strong willed woman who did not let her background hold her back.
Unaware that she has caught the attention of the dark presence in the house's attic. Discovering mementos of the past begin to change Sona bit by bit and her admiration for the manor and its occupant evolves. But so does the presence that's lurked in the shadows.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years was a slow-paced book steeped in gothic horror, anglophile colonization and racism that's inflated by the bigotry of the caste system. I cannot talk too much about Meena's life since it is the root of the mystery of this book. But I will say that Meena fell in love with a man named Akbar; it was unexpected, powerful, pure and bright. Meena was a smart, brave and strong willed woman who did not let her background hold her back.
Readers can expect several mentions of death in the narrative, but Sona's character felt like a vessel for the message of life. She wasn't truly happy with her existence but she's always in search of something--information, answers, connections, love.
And with her level of "second-sight" I could see how empathic her character was, she was just a little lost. Her father loved her but he became a shell when he mother passed. The other tenants in the Akbar house were opinionated and weird but each of them lost something or someone too before they found their way to the manor. Was it intentional for the house to become a home for lost souls (Djinn or humans alike?). Maybe.
The Djinn that has stayed in the house since Meena's death seemed to bond itself to the house. Unable to leave the place without her. But also stuck in a state of purgatory because the reason for Meena's death was never revealed. It seemed to see something in Sona and allowed her to discover Meena's things, diaries and her story. As if it deemed her worthy enough to share her existence and life with Sona.
Sona's character development maneisted very slowly in the narrative; starting with the little things she would do for her house mates. And the most impactful, visual development lay within the Djinn and the house. When the secret cause of Meena's death is finally vocalized and the weight of its impact? Calm before the storm.
The last 10-15% began to make the most sense when re-visiting the quote from Doctor's character in the book earlier on: "A new place doesn't mean you can start over....The past will always follow you"
A haunting, descriptive and vivid story. I would like to read more by this author.
While there were some rather confusing parts of this audio book, especially at the beginning, there was a lot of depth, richness of culture, and perspective I really enjoyed. It was an interesting and twisty tale that if I were to use yarn and nots to showcase what this story looked like, it would be a loosely woven rainbow colored macramé with random woolen yarn representing characters; of which some, having been ripped out of the sides just to be picked back into the macramé after having been removed for inches at a time, or left aside altogether.