Winner of an English PEN Translates Award.
Historical fiction meets crime fiction in The Djinn’s Apple, an award-winning YA murder mystery set in the Abbasid period—the golden age of Baghdad.
A ruthless murder. A magical herb. A mysterious manuscript.
When Nardeen’s home is stormed by angry men frantically in search of something—or someone—she is the only one who manages to escape. And after the rest of her family is left behind and murdered, Nardeen sets out on an unyielding mission to bring her family’s killers to justice, regardless of the cost…
Full of mystery and mayhem, The Djinn’s Apple is perfect for fans of Arabian Nights, City of Brass, and The Wrath and the Dawn.
Djamila Morani is an Algerian novelist and an Arabic language professor. Her first novel, released in 2015 and titled Taj el-Khatiaa, is set in the Abbasid period (like The Djinn’s Apple), but in Kazakh- stan. All of her works are fast-paced historical fiction pieces. She is yet to have a full-length work translated into English. Djamila lives in Relizane, in the west of Algeria.
You can find Djamila on Twitter @DjamilaMorani and Insta @morani_djamila
You can find Sawad on Twitter @sawadhussain and Insta @sawad18
My thoughts: this was a really sad and moving story of love and revenge, scholarship and the dangers of too much knowledge.
Nardeen’s family are brutally murdered, she swears she will avenge them. Taken in by the doctor Muallim Ishaq, she trains to be a doctor in the Bimaristan (hospital) in Baghdad, then a shining example of hygiene and medicine.
This brings her into contact with the man she believes is behind her family’s deaths. But her mentor is hiding secrets. When she learns what the Djinn’s Apple is and how far some will go to get it, she starts to understand exactly what her father, also a doctor, was caught up in.
A clever and intense, enjoyable mystery with a smart and rather brilliant young woman as its protagonist. A glimpse into a past much of the world is rather ignorant about.
The historical notes at the end provide context and firmly plant Nardeen in the Baghdad of its past, when it was a shining example of multi-cultural life and education, bringing it into the present and to life once more. A delight.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own
ramblingmads 
Fantastic review
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