Shelf Care: Cyber adventure meets The Arabian Nights in Alif The Unseen

Alif The Unseen is about a hacker who dodges the authorities while offering his cyber services to anyone who pays. PHOTOS: GROVE PRESS, AMBER FRENCH

Fantasy

Alif The Unseen
By G. Willow Wilson
Grove Press/ 2012/ 456 pages/ $18.95/ Available here

Cyber adventure meets The Arabian Nights in this rollicking read which grips the reader from page one.

It starts conventionally with the eponymous protagonist, a hacker extraordinaire whose handle is Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet.

Alif offers his cyber services to anyone who pays, from pornographers to revolutionaries, which makes him a target in the unnamed authoritarian Middle Eastern country where he lives.

The 20-something dodges the authorities while moping over being dumped by his aristocratic girlfriend Intisar, who is betrothed to Alif's nemesis: the head cyber enforcer whom Alif has nicknamed the Hand of God.

Once Alif goes on the run from the Hand, genres get mashed up in the most deliriously pleasurable fashion.

Alif is in possession of a book called the Alf Yeom, supposedly narrated by a djinn to a human scribe, which the state wants because it might hold the secret to building a quantum-bit-powered supercomputer.

Enter assorted djinns and references that will delight any devotee of fantasy and fables.

What sets this tale apart is Wilson's deft and seamless melding of different worlds. A Boston University-educated graphic novelist who converted to Islam, Wilson is married to an Egyptian and has lived in Cairo on and off for a decade.

As someone who straddles diverse cultural and religious worlds, she writes thoughtfully and empathetically about everything from Middle Eastern realpolitik to Islamic thought. She is also very, very funny.

There are throwaway comic scenes, such as one in which Alif is boggled to find out that djinnland has computers and Wi-Fi, and a snarkily hilarious discussion of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (1957 to 1960), which one character dismisses as Western because it is about "bored, tired people having sex".

There are also unexpected lyrical, insightful scenes which convey the beauty of Islam, such as one where an elderly imam draws a parallel between Alif's explanation of quantum computing and his religious studies.

"They say that each word in the Qur'an has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction."

Such unexpectedly resonant connections make Alif The Unseen a surprisingly fulfilling read despite its fantastic setting.

• Shelf Care is a twice-weekly column that recommends uplifting, comforting or escapist books to read while staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.