THE DJINN'S APPLE

In the Arab Abbasid caliphate of Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad, 14-year-old Nardeen Baramika seeks revenge on the man responsible for her family’s deaths in this novel from Algeria, translated from Arabic.

Having fallen out of favor, the once-powerful noble Baramika family, who are Muslims of Persian origin, are being hunted down and executed by al-Rashid. But when the caliph’s men discover the family’s new home, Nardeen’s nonpolitical father—a physician and transcriber of medical texts—sends a confused Nardeen outside to safety, promising to follow with the rest of the family. After returning to find Baba, Mama, and her three siblings murdered and branded as Zoroastrian apostates implicated in poisoning the caliph’s cousin, Nardeen is beaten unconscious by a servant of Al-Aasefi, a family friend turned accuser, who’s seeking a manuscript Nardeen saw in Baba’s library. After she comes to in the Bimaristan medical school, Nardeen learns she’s slated to be sold into slavery, but she impresses Muallim Ishaq, a respected and renowned Jewish medical professor, with her strong memory and medical knowledge. The professor, who respected Nardeen’s father and feels sorry for her plight, buys her and helps her prepare to seek vengeance. But as Nardeen grows in knowledge and cunning, she finds herself running out of time to untangle the complicated truth. Morani weaves a compact and compelling tale of revenge, intrigue, and moral ambiguity with a fascinating historical setting.

An engrossing mystery with a haunting and convincing conclusion.