The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is Shubnum Khan‘s first novel available in the United States. This is one of those cases where the cover completely captured my attention; it is gorgeous and evocative. I also have a growing interest in djinn, so I was excited to read a new book in which they feature. Though some of my expectations going in were a bit off, I loved this novel and will recommend it far and wide.

Special thanks to Viking and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Summary

In 2014, Sana and her father move to a strange home in Durban, South Africa. The house has a haunting quality about it, and the other inhabitants there have their own relationships with each other and the house’s history. Sana starts to dig into the home’s secrets, stumbling across the tragic story of the first family who lived there in the 1920s and 1930s. Going back and forth between the two timelines, this novel is about family traumas and how their effects can reverberate for years or decades to come.

Review

Right away, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years completely drew me in. It’s divided into three parts and two separate timelines. In 2014, Sana is a teenage girl who’s just moved to a strange new home with her dad in Durban, South Africa. Once a magnificent mansion, the structure now houses several apartments, but it’s oddly dilapidated despite the renovation. Sana gets the sense that the place is haunted, which only adds to her own private issue of being haunted by her dead twin sister. Sana is determined to find out more about the house’s mysterious past. Nearly a hundred years earlier, we meet the Khan family when they arrive from India. The husband is besotted by South Africa and decides to build a home there, ignoring his new wife’s protestations. After a decade, he is a success in his business and his family, with his wife, two kids, and mother all living in the mansion with their staff and menagerie of exotic animals. But then he sets his eyes on a woman who works in his business and decides to take her as a second wife. This unleashes a series of events that only grow more tragic. Amidst all of this, an unseen djinn plays witness. 

This novel is written in such an ethereal manner. The way the author describes the different characters, especially Sana, and the curious way she sees and measures the world, is engrossing. Some passages are beautiful in their vivid descriptions of emotions. Then there are the passages that describe how the house is reacting, as if it’s a sentient being. I’ve rarely seen this device used, and while I don’t always like the effect, here it works magnificently. 

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years goes back and forth between the two timelines. In 2014, Sana meets several neighbors, an elderly man called Doctor and a few women. It’s a quirky cast of characters, with several points of contention between the neighbors. What I enjoyed more is when Sana starts exploring the house and stumbles upon the hidden room with its decades-old secrets. 

The historical timeline was often more exciting for me. Its starts in 1919 when a new couple arrives in South Africa to make their new home there. The wife is not a likable woman, and her mother-in-law isn’t any better. But when the husband brings in a second wife, Meena—a poorer woman whom the others all look down on—the household goes through some massive changes. I found these parts intriguing, beautifully described, and ultimately tragic and heartbreaking. 

As the novel’s title would suggest, there is a djinn lurking in the background throughout all of this. I enjoyed the djinn’s characterization, though I thought it would play a bigger role by the end. Similarly, this book has been marketed as being at least somewhat horror. However, as dark as some themes and events are, I wouldn’t categorize it as horror. It is haunting and unsettling, but feels more like a gothic work of drama and historical fiction. 

Final Thoughts

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a mesmerizing, tragic, and haunting novel of family secrets and letting go of the past. There are some troubling themes (including suicidal ideation), but it’s beautifully written and captivating from start to finish. This is my first time reading Shubnum Khan, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. 

Get the Book

You can buy The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan
Audience	Adult
Genre	Gothic; Historical Fiction
Setting	South Africa
Number of Pages	320
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	January 9, 2024
Publisher	Viking

Official Summary

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR’S CHOICE

“Rich and swoony…an ambitious delight, with rich characters and some exceptionally lovely writing…This is the start of a major career.” — The New York Times Book Review

AN INDIE NEXT PICK
A LIBRARY READS PICK

“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous

Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic misfits, seeking solely to disappear into the mansion’s dark corridors. Except for Sana. Unlike the others, she is curious and questioning and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion: To the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects—and to the door at its end, locked for decades.

Behind the door is a bedroom frozen in time and a worn diary that whispers of a dark past: the long-forgotten story of a young woman named Meena, who died there tragically a hundred years ago. Watching Sana from the room’s shadows is a besotted, grieving djinn, an invisible spirit who has haunted the mansion since her mysterious death. Obsessed with Meena’s story, and unaware of the creature that follows her, Sana digs into the past like fingers into a wound, dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone living and dead at Akbar Manzil. Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.