WHEN MAGIC MEETS HISTORY

Author Shabnum Khan’s second novel blends the worlds of history, love, and longing through characters and djinns

- SAMREEN TUNGEKAR

 

When young Sana comes with her father to live in a ruined mansion by the sea off the shores of Durban in south Africa, little did she know that it’s haunted by a djinn who is grieving his lover’s mysterious death for over a hundred years, and that everything about this new chapter is going to change her life. Author Shabnum Khan’s pen took its own course when she decided to bring together how love, magic, and grief can coexist within each of us, and how she weaved this world together in The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years.

GRAZIA: You’ve written both fiction and non-fiction. What are the challenges of writing historical fiction?

SHABNUM KHAN: When you write in a vastly different time period, there is the pressure to capture the period authentically. A lot of the reason I set the alternate timeline in the 1930s is because that was when my grandfather arrived in South Africa from India, and he would tell us stories about his journey and that period in his life – so I felt I had some footing in that era. Being able to use elements of magic realism and having the action happen almost entirely within the house helped me control how much history I needed to tell the story.