A Master of Djinn
For the past year or so, the shape of escapism I've wanted has been a murder mystery. I struggle with stories that are too frothy and joyful when the world around me isn't. Mysteries offer a world where evil exists, but can be contained: a fantasy of justice. But for the past year I've been more acutely aware than ever that justice in America is a fantasy in the pejorative sense.
P. Djèlí Clark's book A Master of Djinn, set in an alternate 1912, is a mystery novel for people who want to imagine that justice could work differently. The heroine, special investigator Fatma el-Sha'arawi, works for the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, a new bureau formed to manage the chaos caused by the late nineteenth-century reappearance of djinn. Egypt is central, here. It is the cosmopolitan land that the djinn chose; Cairo is now full of shining buildings designed by djinn architects. The colonizing European countries, suspicious of magic, form a smug sort of backwater.
Master of Djinn waltzes backwards and in very sharply shined shoes through a number of classic mystery tropes. I particularly enjoyed seeing Fatma, with her bowler hat and huge collection of coordinated pinstriped suits, as the cynical and grumpy senior detective resisting a new partner. The partner in this case, Hadia Abdel Hafiz, is a feminist activist who wears bright blue hijab and knows a mosque that holds Friday services for women. Like all good grumpy detectives, Fatma is entangled with a mysterious and alluring woman. The femme fatale in question holds an unsettling allegiance to the goddess Hathor and occasionally manifests literal claws. She also has a large and loving family who run a bustling restaurant, and an aunt who, in classic matriarchal fashion, dispenses wise advice. But my absolute favorite reframing of mystery tropes is the moment when the masked antagonist who has been posing as a literal master of djinn reveals a fascination with Fatma, a grand rivalry propelled by rhetoric about twins and shadows, and Fatma laughs at the ridiculous overweening arrogance this construction entails.
Though Master of Djinn is hanging out in a cool club drinking sarsaparilla with mysteries, its home is the fantasy genre. The clues that matter are clearly telegraphed, but the reason why each clue matters involves magic and the nature of the city itself, and the reader won't have the context to generate these explanations until the story gets there. The key, I think, is interlocking gears. The center of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities is a clockwork brain designed by a djinn. It represents the interlocking factions and desires, some humans and some more than human, actively maintained by the commitments and collisions that make a city. I hadn't read Clark's previous stories about Cairo, but I'm looking forward to consuming all of them, joyfully and in no particular order, bolstered among pillows or curled in a cozy chair, or (someday, again) on trains and planes.
(I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.)
P. Djèlí Clark's book A Master of Djinn, set in an alternate 1912, is a mystery novel for people who want to imagine that justice could work differently. The heroine, special investigator Fatma el-Sha'arawi, works for the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, a new bureau formed to manage the chaos caused by the late nineteenth-century reappearance of djinn. Egypt is central, here. It is the cosmopolitan land that the djinn chose; Cairo is now full of shining buildings designed by djinn architects. The colonizing European countries, suspicious of magic, form a smug sort of backwater.
Master of Djinn waltzes backwards and in very sharply shined shoes through a number of classic mystery tropes. I particularly enjoyed seeing Fatma, with her bowler hat and huge collection of coordinated pinstriped suits, as the cynical and grumpy senior detective resisting a new partner. The partner in this case, Hadia Abdel Hafiz, is a feminist activist who wears bright blue hijab and knows a mosque that holds Friday services for women. Like all good grumpy detectives, Fatma is entangled with a mysterious and alluring woman. The femme fatale in question holds an unsettling allegiance to the goddess Hathor and occasionally manifests literal claws. She also has a large and loving family who run a bustling restaurant, and an aunt who, in classic matriarchal fashion, dispenses wise advice. But my absolute favorite reframing of mystery tropes is the moment when the masked antagonist who has been posing as a literal master of djinn reveals a fascination with Fatma, a grand rivalry propelled by rhetoric about twins and shadows, and Fatma laughs at the ridiculous overweening arrogance this construction entails.
Though Master of Djinn is hanging out in a cool club drinking sarsaparilla with mysteries, its home is the fantasy genre. The clues that matter are clearly telegraphed, but the reason why each clue matters involves magic and the nature of the city itself, and the reader won't have the context to generate these explanations until the story gets there. The key, I think, is interlocking gears. The center of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities is a clockwork brain designed by a djinn. It represents the interlocking factions and desires, some humans and some more than human, actively maintained by the commitments and collisions that make a city. I hadn't read Clark's previous stories about Cairo, but I'm looking forward to consuming all of them, joyfully and in no particular order, bolstered among pillows or curled in a cozy chair, or (someday, again) on trains and planes.
(I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.)