CHICAGO: Set to be published in April 2024, “The Jinn Daughter” is a hauntingly inimitable debut by US Syrian writer Rania Hanna that weaves fantasy with Middle Eastern mythology and folklore in a story that centers around a mother’s struggle to save her daughter. Nadine is a Hakawati Jinn, someone who collects seeds of dead souls and documents their lives before they pass on. One morning she finds herself in the middle of a disaster when the seeds of the dead stop falling. With no souls able to pass, they will remain on Earth and turn into ghouls. But when Death comes to her with a proposal, Nadine’s task becomes clearer and more dangerous. She must outmaneuver death and use her magic to save her daughter Layala and the world as she knows it.
Nadine and Layala live on the outskirts of town and society. Jinns are not welcome among humans. Most were imprisoned or killed during the Jinn Wars, but Nadine is the town’s Hakawati Jinn and therefore she must stay. But her life has never been easy, especially with her only daughter being half-jinn and half-human. Her husband is no longer living with them, and her 14-year-old daughter Layala asks incessant questions about Nadine’s life, duties, and whether or not Layala is destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Managing human deaths, a teenage daughter, and angry townsfolk already weighs Nadine down, but when Kamuna, the guardian of the underworld, visits her and asks for Layala to take her place, Nadine knows her troubles have only just begun.
With the use of her own physical strength, the magic she possesses, and her quick wit, Nadine must do everything in her power to keep her daughter safe. And while Layala has always listened to her mother, when things begin to change, Layala questions what she’s been told as truths begin to unravel.
Bridging life and death with intimate relationships, grief, loss, hope, and love, Hanna’s novel develops ominously from its first sentence. Her characters’ lives are riddled with obstacles as they serve as the viceregents of opposing worlds, attempting to live some semblance of the lives they have inherited. And as a mother is pushed to the brink of the world for her daughter, the heart of the story is about love and sacrifice.
