I read G. Willow Wilson‘s Alif the Unseen this weekend. Gulped, actually, the way you accidentally eat a whole pint of ice cream because you don’t notice until it’s mostly gone and then you might as well eat the last few bites. So a beautiful afternoon of biking on one of Puget Sound’s many islands was delayed while I found out how the story ended.
Alif is Willow’s debut fiction novel, but by no means her first publication. Her memoir of living in Egypt, The Butterfly Mosque, came out in 2010, she is the author of several graphic novels, and has written numerous journalistic pieces of the Middle East. She is also a fellow student at my martial arts school, which brought her writing to my attention–the Middle East is not one of my usual topics of interest.
Magical realism is, though, and so is a clever layering of mythologies into a contemporary storyline. Alif hits those buttons for me, and I’m very happy to have it in my library, even for a hardcover price. Willow acknowledges Neil Gaiman as one of her influences, and I can see that. Some of the story elements also make me think of Rushdie.
I found Alif to be a classic tale of good versus evil which follows Joseph Campbell’s monomyth structure quite closely.[1] Willow has hung a fine and fleshy narrative onto this familiar skeleton, and created a window into a world that you, my probably Western reader, probably do not know well. Our titular hero begins as a “gray hat” with the technical knowhow to offer cyber security from censorship, surveillance and other internet trouble to a wide ideological variety of clients. From his usual world, he is soon thrust into a hidden realm where jinns and efrits live at the edges of human sight, and he must learn the significance and use of a mystical jinn text. Helper figures appear to assist him on this journey into the unknown, and when he returns to his everyday world, he has the knowledge to change everything — rewriting the code that controls the computer systems of his city state, and aiding the popular revolution that has broken out as Willow’s fictional emirate joins the Arab Spring.
Of course, it’s not just a feel good adventure story. In many ways, Alif is also a book about faith. All of the characters in Alif are Muslim, with varying degrees of adherence. (If you find this peculiar, please imagine a book by a Western author, perhaps interweaving themes and images from Le Morte d’Arthur, and consider your feelings on an all Christian cast.) Although I am not overly concerned with religious content I went looking to see what other reviews had said, and found a number of them fixated on one particular quote.
Superstition is thriving. Pedantry is thriving. Sectarianism is thriving. Belief is dying out.
Each reader, bringing their own experience to the interpretation of the text, saw it differently. For one, it is part of how “this book talks about how sometimes religious people pick and choose what to believe.” Another sees it as an expression of the idea that “we are losing our way spiritually, even as the world seems to be receding into religiosity.” For the LA Times critic, the lines mean that Willow “wants us to recognize the extent to which the world, both internal and external, remains beyond us, not just out of sight but literally unable to be seen.” The Wall Street Journal uses the quote to illustrate that “the book advocates a model of Muslim faith that combines a return to the mysticism and spirituality that prevailed during Islam’s artistic golden age with a forward-looking embrace of the creative freedom allowed by unfettered access to technology.”
It should be obvious to you by know that this is a book which will mean many different things to different readers. I look forward to rereading it to appreciate the different layers, but on my first pass I was most struck by the blend of cultures: old mythologies overlaid by new technologies, the inmix of Western internet culture into the urban Middle East. As an American born, adult convert to Islam, Willow is a third culture voice. Obviously the names of Arab pop stars mean little to me and I undoubtedly missed the majority of Eastern cultural references, but I appreciate the Western nods. In the early chapters you will find a line from one of the original Star Wars movies, a childhood favorite for my generation, now staring down 30. There are shades of J.K. Rowling, as Alif is led by a jinn through a seemingly solid wall into the colorfully magical Immovable Alley. [2] These subtle nods demonstrate to me that Willow is aware of the storytelling tradition in which she exists, of its breadth and its depth. Alif is also unabashedly wed to youth culture–there’s even a “your mom” joke–which is one of the aspects of the modern Arab world which Willow set out to reveal.
As I pursue my own writing goals, I have been reading science fiction and fantasy and encountering world building. When an author introduces to that certain alien race on a planet far, far away that has hitherto existed only in the author’s head, they must build up a world of words for us, the readers. They must show us how these beings act, how they dress, what they eat, explain enough of their culture that a reader can follow the logic of why the characters act as they do. With a subtle hand, Willow performs this same service for her readers, introducing them to the contemporary Middle East. She brings us an every day, living room portion of the Middle East which does not reach us through our television news. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading.
If you’re intrigued, pick up the book, which is in wide distribution. You can also follow along with Willow on her blog, or on Twitter, and if you’re geographically lucky, see her at an upcoming event of her book tour.
[1] Whether Willow meant this, or whether it is an artifact of how truly universal the monomyth is, I couldn’t say. When I reread the wikipedia page, just to make sure that my undergrad remembrance was correct, I was surprised to see how closely Alif tracks to the monomyth structure.
[2] I am not sure what the NY Times book critic saw when she wrote Alif was “a young man with Harry Potter potential.” I hope she means the potential to be the book that sells vast amounts and causes angst amongst conservative families who fear their children will be tempted to witchcraft, not just the potential to be the hero who defeats evil, because that’s kind of obvious.
