Distraught, Alif does what any self-respecting geek would do to mend a broken heart: He hacks Intisar’s computer and designs a program that can monitor her every online move by identifying her unique pattern of keystrokes.īut no sooner is Alif’s binary genie out of the bottle than his pattern recognition program is hacked by the government’s Internet censor, known as the Hand of God. He’s too embroiled in a clandestine affair with Intisar, a beautiful young aristocrat who severs all contact when her arranged marriage to a fellow blue blood is imminent. I told you you wouldn’t understand.”Īlif is oblivious to the fact that, behind the veil that reveals only her emerald eyes, Dina is deeply in love with him.

He’s also not much of a religious believer, as demonstrated when his more conservative friend and neighbor, Dina, returns a borrowed copy of “The Golden Compass”: (Alif is his screen name, and the first letter of the Arabic alphabet.) The son of an absent Arab father and a Hindu mother, Alif is an online mercenary who provides cover for various Web sites run by a “coterie of bloggers, pornographers, Islamists and activists from Palestine to Pakistan.” At the novel’s outset, he’s more Han Solo than hacktivist: “Alif was not an ideologue as far as he was concerned, anyone who could pay for his protection was entitled to it.” Alif, 23, lives in a modern, unnamed city in an unnamed emirate. Willow Wilson’s marvelous first novel, “ Alif the Unseen,” takes events similar to those of the Arab Spring, adds a runaway computer virus, an unconventional love story and the odd genie to create an intoxicating, politicized amalgam of science fiction and fantasy.Īn American-born journalist, Wilson is a convert to Islam who’s written eloquently about religion and politics in numerous publications and a memoir, “ The Butterfly Mosque.” She also penned the award-winning graphic novel “ Cairo” and the comic series “ Vixen.” These various literary enterprises dovetail in her new book, which also manages to get in a few amusing nods to “Star Wars” and uses Philip Pullman’s irreligious novel “ The Golden Compass” as the springboard for a heated, protracted discussion of the power of words to change the world.

Alif the unseen review