Alif the Unseen

[sawyl]

Time to try and catch up with a few bits and pieces of recent reading, starting with G. Willow Wilson's excellent Alif the Unseen. Set in an unnamed and rather oppressive Middle Eastern state, it mixes cyberpunk with Islam with Orientalist fantasy in a way that works brilliantly.

The convoluted, genre crossing plot begins when Alif, our hacker hero, finds himself caught up in a pair of crises. Professionally, he finds himself struggling to protect his clients — anyone who wants to hide from state supervision and is willing to pay — from the new censor, nicknamed The Hand of God by the City's electronic underground. Meanwhile on the personal front, he has to cope with the abrupt collapse of his relationship with a rich, upper-class student called Intisar.

When Alif's practical neighbour Dina comes back from an errand to Intisar bearing a old and mysterious book, the pair promptly find themselves on the wrong side of state security. In a frantic attempt to escape Alif and Dina end up throwing themselves on the mercy of a djinn called Vikram the Vampire and enlisting the help of an American academic who may be able to unravel the secrets of the book before the forces of the Hand catch up with them.

There's so much to like about Alif the Unseen, it's hard to know where to start. The characters are a sheer delight. Alif is immature and naive in an authentically nerdy way. Dina, sturdy and dependable, is obviously in love with Alif and is quite prepared to wait for him to grow up enough to notice. Intisar on the other hand, is Dina's essential opposite: superficially attractive, but ultimately spoilt and self-centred. The American Academic is particularly well done. Always slightly out of sync with events around her, as befits someone who can't accept anything even remotely unseen, she's constantly dismissed by the other characters to the point where she doesn't even get a proper name. Through out the story, she's only ever referred to as "the convert" — a significant fact, given the weight the rest of the book gives to names and the meanings of names.

The action of the book is an intriguing mix of fantasy and theology and politics, taking in the myths of the djinn, the fixed and ever-changing nature of the scriptures, and the way a number of Middle Eastern governments have found themselves suddenly faced with revolution. The stuff on hacking more Hollywood than Stephenson, but that's more than forgivable given the deeply boring nature of real computer science — I'd far rather Alif's metaphorical description of his code to yet another in-depth discussion of the internals of finux!

Highly recommended.