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.
Magical ... The scorned wife, feels cartoonishly villainous. And as we race toward parallel endings, one shocking, the other predictable (with its own kind of satisfaction), we lose sight of Sana herself. These are minor issues, however, in a novel that is an ambitious delight, with rich characters and some exceptionally lovely writing.
Khan stuns with a multigenerational gothic tale infused with magical realism ... This novel is a mystery and a love story fraught with heartbreak, infused with Islamic mythology, and written in evocative, lyrical prose. Fans of Isabel Allende and Alice Hoffman will be enchanted with this beautiful book.
Dazzling ... 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...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.