The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

October 2, 2023
South African novelist Khan blends gothic tropes with Indian mythology in her poignant U.S. debut. Sana, a 15-year-old Indian girl whose mother died of cancer several years earlier, lives with her father in an apartment in a run-down mansion in the South African coastal town of Durban. Sana copes with her grief by diving into the story of the house’s original owner, which Khan expands in a parallel narrative tracing Akbar Ali Khan’s 1919 departure from Bombay to build the mansion and fill it with his family and exotic pets. Akbar eventually becomes dissatisfied with his marriage and takes a second wife, Meena. As Sana becomes invested in the Akbars’ love story and tries to discover their fate, she uncovers long-buried secrets about the family. Khan also devotes chapters to a djinn, who has a room to itself in the house and remembers a “dead woman” who once lived there. Despite the disparate elements, the novel coheres as Khan portrays the house’s point of view, showing in playful and evocative prose how it responds to new residents (“As the new smells climb excitedly into the eaves... older smells, annoyed, move higher up away”). This holds its own in a crowded field of neo-gothic fiction. Agent: Julia Kardon, HG Literary.