Muslim Shelf Space #2017

So, for those of you that don’t know, #MuslimShelfSpace is a movement that’s been quite popular on Twitter this year, challenging people to read more books by Muslim authors. It’s a movement I’ve tweeted about quite a few times as it’s definitely a worthwhile thing to do and for those that have only just heard of it, I hope you’ll add at least one of these books to your TBR list for next year!

I’ve read a grand total of 6 books by Muslim authors this year, which although that might sound like quite a lot to some people, it’s actually only 3% of the total books I read this year! Now, the actual total might be slightly more as it’s not always easy to find out what religion authors are but that’s still way lower than I’d like.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are the books!

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HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas

So not only is this book by a Muslim author, but it’s actually a Saudi Arabian book translated from Arabic into English. I’m a big fan of stories involving Djinn and HWJN is perfect for that. I really enjoyed it and will definitely be reading more by this author in 2018!

You can find my review of it here.

Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed

This is a fantastic collection of short SFF stories by an author I already loved. I really enjoyed Throne of the Crescent Moon and when I found this collection on Amazon, I just had to read it. The eBook is completely free too so you can try it out and if you don’t enjoy it, you’ve not lost anything.

You can read my review of it here

Iraq + 100 ed. by Hassan Blasim

This is a collection of short stories by multiple different Iraqi authors who were all asked to imagine what Iraq would look like in 2103, 100 years after the invasion. It was incredibly interesting to see all the different worlds they imagined and the stories contained cover a range of genres.

You can read my review here

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

This is one of the books I’ve seen mentioned quite a bit of Twitter which is what made me choose to read it (that and my library had a copy so that always helps) and it definitely lived up to the hype I’d seen. It’s full of fascinating creatures such as Djinn and effrit and the storytelling was delightful.

I thought I’d reviewed this but turns out I haven’t, so I might need to do that at some point next year! I’d definitely recommend it though.

Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet & Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous

I discovered Amara Lakhous as part of my attempt to find an Algerian author for my “Read Around the World” challenge and absolutely adored Divorce Islamic Style so just had to read more by him. His tone is brilliant and the stories are both delightful and hilarious. I actually ended up getting my mum’s bookclub to choose Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet as their next book by raving about it so much to her.

I’ve reviewed Divorce Islamic Style which you can read here but not got around to reviewing Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet yet which again is on my to-write list.

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Anyway, hopefully this will give you all some more books to add to your TBR for 2018 and for those that have taken part, please let me know what books you’d recommend I read next year because I can never have too many recommendations!

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Book Review – HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas

Goodreads Synopsis:

HWJN is the #1 selling Arabic book in Saudi, it is a mix between fantasy, SciFi and romance. While most people get excited about legends of spirits and genies (Jinn) and pass it on as they listen to it with awe and horror (after adding their own spices to it); here comes Hawjan. The young Jinni who is in his early nineties to redefine our understanding of the Jinn world that resembles ours in so many ways, still it is a parallel dimension to ours. He shares his tale so that we can live it through a “human” perspective regardless of the differences between our two worlds.
As human populations expand Hawjan found himself surrounded by humans who had built a housing complex in the area surrounding his village forcing him, his mother and grandfather to live in one of these villas that is now haunted by humans. Hawjan’s efforts to avoid interacting with the human family had failed, finding himself madly in love with Sawsan the human, Sawsan was a medical student, gentle and brilliant, barely a quarter of his age. Hawjan was unable to let her know about his feelings until he learned how to communicate with Sawsan through the Ouija board. He found out about her brain cancer that she had hidden from everyone including her family. As Sawsan’s suffering increased and her health deteriorated her father was easy prey for a sorcerer who tricked him into believing that Sawsan’s illness was a result of the devils who had haunted their new home, and so a deadly battle between Hawjan and the devils and sorcerer who had tried extort money from Sawsan’s father. With the help of Eyad (Sawsan’s colleague) who had agreed to Hawjan possessing him so that they would both risk their lives to save Sawsan and her father.

Review:

So, I found out about this book when writing my post about Muslim Sci-Fi to check out and I recently got a comment from the co-author, Yasser Bahjatt, saying he would be honoured to read my reviews of his books and so I just had to get it along with Yaqteenya which I’ll be reading and reviewing soon. I chose to read this one first because I really enjoy stories with Jinn in them and because it’s also a perfect fit for Saudi Arabia for my Read Around the World challenge.

To start off, as this book was originally written in Arabic I am naturally reading a translation. The English translation is very well done and was a pleasure to read. I noticed a lot of reviews on GR in Arabic that complained about the language used however because I am not reading the Arabic version, this was never an issue to me so if those lower reviews put you off, run a few through Google Translate first as the majority of the issues were purely with the language.

I’m a big fan of Jinn in stories and so I was thrilled that this book was written from the perspective of a Jinn named Hawjan. Hawjan’s family home has recently become “haunted” by humans moving in to the area and so although his mother and grandfather move to the roof to escape them, Hawjan lingers in the room that used to be his which now belongs to Sawsan, a young medical student. Hawjan begins to grow close to Sawsan and when one of her friends brings an Ouija Board, he is excited to have the chance to communicate with her. The novel follows the story of their growing friendship and the challenges Hawjan faces in order to protect her from the much more dangerous Jinn.

The worldbuilding in this was excellent. I am unaware how much of it was based on myths and how much was the authors own imagination but the world that was described was brilliant and I loved the differences between the Jinn world and our own. One aspect in particular I liked was the fact that it mentioned that Jinn could be all sorts of different religions. Hawjan himself is a Muslim Jinn and descended from a Jinn that met the Prophet. This plays an important role in the story and it was very interesting to see supernatural characters be represented as also religious in a very natural fashion.

If you are looking to try reading some Fantasy/Sci-Fi in translation then this is an excellent place to start. It’s brilliant for #muslimshelfspace and if you’re looking to expand your horizons and read books from other countries then it’s a great pick. Even then, if you’re simply looking for a nice enjoyable story then I highly recommend this. I could barely put it down and managed to finish it very quickly as I enjoyed it so much.

8 Sci-Fi Books featuring Muslim characters to add to your TBR list!

There’s been a lot on Twitter recently about #MuslimShelfSpace and one genre I’ve not seen mentioned much is that of Sci-Fi, so I present to you a list of Sci-Fi stories featuring Muslim characters to add to your to-read list.

 

ISTANBUL: QUEEN OF CITIES. Here histories, empires, and continents meet and cross. It is the mid-twenty first century and Turkey is a proud and powerful member of a European Union that runs from the Atlantic to Mt. Ararat.

In the sleepy Istanbul district of Eskiköy stands the former whirling dervish house of Adem Dede. Six characters’ lives revolve around it.

Over the space of five days of an Istanbul heat wave, these lives weave a story of corporate wheeling and dealing, Islamic mysticism, political and economic intrigues, ancient Ottoman mysteries, a terrifying new terrorist threat, and a nanotechnology with the potential to transform every human on the planet.

 

 

In medieval Baghdad, a penniless man is brought before the most powerful man in the world, the caliph himself, to tell his story. It begins with a walk in the bazaar, but soon grows into a tale unlike any other told in the caliph’s empire. It’s a story that includes not just buried treasure and a band of thieves, but also men haunted by their past and others trapped by their future; it includes not just a beloved wife and a veiled seductress, but also long journeys taken by caravan and even longer ones taken with a single step. Above all, it’s a story about recognizing the will of Allah and accepting it, no matter what form it takes.

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground.

When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

 

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available…for a price.
For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.

The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.

Four centuries after humanity has colonized the galaxy, information freight companies are used as an alternative to electronic communication. On one of her frequent trips into deep space, Katmer Al-Shei, owner of one of the smaller information companies, is accused of smuggling artificial intelligence. When Al-Shei tries to clear her name, she uncovers conspiracy after conspiracy, all set against the backdrop of a looming war.

 

 

 

Written for the discerning science fiction reader, the book races from the creation to apocalypse and from the ordinary to utter insanity, while the fire smoldering between the words may indeed set preconceptions alight. He who doesn’t lose himself doesn’t understand or he who understands loses himself. Translated seamlessly by English writer and translator Feyza Howell.

 

 

 

HWJN is the #1 selling Arabic book in Saudi, it is a mix between fantasy, SciFi and romance. While most people get excited about legends of spirits and genies (Jinn) and pass it on as the listen to it with awe and horror (after adding their own spices to it); here comes Hawjan. The young Jinni who is in his early nineties to redefine our understanding of the Jinn world that resembles ours in so many ways, still it is a parallel dimension to ours. He shares his tale so that we can live it through a “human” perspective regardless of the differences between our two worlds.

 

 

How would the world look like if major historical events in the Islamic world played out differently? How would technology develop?
#Yaqteenya is an alternate history novel that explores those questions from an Middle Eastern point of view, in a setting that is part SciFi and part fantasy.

Yaqteenya is facing its first civil war, To save it from it self, Al-Baz needs to break its #1 law and leave Yaqteenay to find answers about the truth that the rulers of the land.

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Have you read any of these? What did you think? Are there any books I missed out that you think should be included? Let me know!

All the descriptions and cover images are taken from Goodreads. Clicking on the cover image will bring you to the relevant Goodreads page.