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Published May 2021
400 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn.
Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she's certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.
So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.
Alongside her Ministry colleagues and a familiar person from her past, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city―or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems…
A Master of Djinn is poised to launch P. Djèlí Clark's SFF career to new heights as the highly-anticipated debut readers are clamoring for.
"With this fantastic feat of postcolonial imagination, Clark reconfigures history with a keen, critical eye toward gender, class, and imperialism. Meanwhile, the colorful prose and thorough worldbuilding allow readers to truly enter this imagined world. An epic tale of magic and mystery, this is sure to wow." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Clark deftly explores colonialism and the history of Cairo with an immersive setting that acts as another character in this delightful combination of mystery, fantasy, and romance. Give this to alternate history enthusiasts and mystery readers who enjoy a dose of the magical." - Booklist (starred review)
"A clever, wickedly fun steampunk mystery with an excellent balance of humor and heart. I loved it." - S. A. Chakraborty, internationally-bestselling author of The City of Brass
"A Master of Djinn has all the tricky twists I want in a police procedural and all the djinns, magic and wonder I want from fantasy." - Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of The Calculating Stars
"Fascinating! I love the intricate alt-history world of A Master of Djinn, with its hints at the changed destinies of nations and ordinary people alike after the cataclysmic return of magic to the world. Clark gives us an engaging mystery with a wonderful mix of the fantastic and the mundane, chain-smoking crocodile gods, stuffy marid librarians, and a brilliant heroine with a dashing bowler." - Django Wexler, author of The Thousand Names
This information about A Master of Djinn was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. Djèlí Clark spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. P. Djèlí Clark is the author of the novellas The Black God's Drums, winner of a 2019 Alex Award from the American Library Association; The Haunting of Tram Car 015; and A Dead Djinn in Cairo. His short story "The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" (Fireside Fiction) has earned him both a Nebula and Locus award. He is loosely associated with the quarterly FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons. He currently resides in New England and ruminates on issues of diversity in speculative fiction.
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