The Djinn's Apple by Djamila Morani

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for The Djinn's Apple by Djamila Morani. It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. 

I don't often read books in translation but this one was done in a lovely way. Here's to translators the world over! There were certain phrases that were just so beautiful and which added to this book feeling like poetry almost. It definitely feels like a bit of a dream. 

The book is set in Baghdad, in the Abbasid period of time, under that caliphate. This was new to me so I enjoyed learning a little bit about it. At the beginning of the book Nardeen is twelve and she lives with her parents, her two older brothers, and her little sister. Her dad is a doctor and a translator; he teaches Nardeen about healing the sick and so on. She wants to be a doctor too. The caliph doesn't like her family, and one night his men break in and kill all of Nardeen's famile except for her. She manages to escape, unsure who or what they are looking for. She comes round in a hospital and learns she has been captured as a slave and will be sold. 

However, then a man called Ishaq saves her from that. He is known to her and it's not entirely clear whose side he is on. But she trusts him and over the next four years they do build a sort of father/daughter relationship. Then he takes her to the hospital where he teaches, and includes her in the teaching even though the male students aren't too keen on this. But she can do things that the men can't, including treating high class women who can't be seen uncovered by men. Ishaq teaches Nardeen to trust in her instincts. She starts to fall in love. But she still wants to serve justice on the men who killed her family... what will she do when she comes face to face with one of them?

I loved the setting of this book and Nardeen is a great character. I loved the historical background and really I just wish it had been longer because I wanted more of it!

Thank you for reading. Please check out the other stops on the tour! 

A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby - Review

I had heard loads of good things about this book on Twitter so when I bought a bunch of books off Waterstones a few months ago I added this as I was intrigued and it was only a few quid. I knew it had fantasy elements which isn't usually my jam, but I was determined to keep an open mind. It turns out that I like fantasy when it is rooted in the modern world but has magical elements, and I don't really like ye olde worlde fantasy when the world is totally different. Now that I know that, I may well choose some more fantasy books to read!

Okay, so the main character here is Safiya. She is thirteen years old and at the beginning of the book lives with her dad. Her parents are divorced and her mum lives in a flat nearby. Her best friend is Elle. Elle and Safi's mum seem to have more in common than Safiya does; they go to the theatre and Safi misses out on buying tickets to a video game convention that she wants to go to. Later, Safiya and her mum have a huge argument and Safiya storms out. 

Then Mum has a stroke and ends up in a coma. Safiya is obviously devastated. She goes to visit her mum, and then slips into a kind of dream world. She's back in her mother's home in Kuwait, where the young Aminah grew up. Safi sees her mum's experiences as a young girl and as she does so begins to unlock more understanding about her mum.

At the same time, Safi's friendship with Elle is in trouble. Safiya has always been very much in Elle's shadow, very much the follower to Elle's leader, but then she learns how to stand up for herself. I loved this aspect of the book - it was so true to how friendship as a young teen is. When it hurts and you're growing, but growing apart. I loved this so much, as well as Safiya's new friends and how precious they were. 

Safiya's dad, James, is white, but her mum is from Kuwait and grew up in a Muslim family. This culture is depicted really richly and in a really beautiful way in the book. I don't know too much about Kuwait but I could picture it perfectly and really liked it. I liked how the narrative wound its way through Aminah's past and things that were precious to her, and how while these things were different to Safiya's interests but she still understood why they were precious - which again is something you have to learn about growing up. 

This is a sold middle grade novel with lovely fantasy elements and strong relationships. I loved the ending. I liked Safiya's relationships with both her parents. My only criticisms are from a writing point of view - there are a few continuity errors that I couldn't help but notice and which annoyed me! But I'm giving this four out of five. 

Unicorn by Amrou Al-Kadhi - Review

I saw this book on Netgalley and was intrigued, so I requested it. Thank you so much to 4th Estate for granting me the access to read this. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Let me give you the blurb of this book from Netgalley:

From a god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family, this is a heart-breaking and hilarious memoir about the author’s fight to be true to themself.

My name is Amrou Al-Kadhi – by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to.

Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning.

This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way.

Most of all, this is a book about my mother. It’s the journey of how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope – and the life-long search for belonging.

I haven't heard of Amrou or their drag alter ego, Glamrou, but I was intrigued to read the memoir of a queer person of colour, especially one who grew up in the middle east. I read this book really quickly, it's very compelling and isn't very long. Amrou grew up in the middle east and realised early on that they were not straight. This was squashed by the family, leading to Amrou becoming obsessed with getting perfect grades at school. These OCD tendencies were described in a beautiful and painful way, which I liked reading. I loved the parts about Amrou's fish tanks.

At sixteen they went to Eton, and tried desperately to fit in there, mostly by squashing their Muslim and Iraqi heritage and trying to be like the white boys. There, Amrou had their first sexual experiences, some of which sound really sad and awful. Amrou then went to Cambridge, and there found drag, and a queer family, and began to settle into themselves.

The parts where Amrou was estranged from their parents really got to me, they're told amazingly but I could feel the hurt behind every word. This is a really honest memoir and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am giving it four out of five.