Usman Malik: The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn

[bibliogramma]

Usman Malik's fantasy novella, The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn, is a wondrous and lyrical tale about finding the balance between history and myth, past and present, the world of scholarship and science and that of artistry and spirit. It is about discovering and owning one's heritage, about family and mystery and memory.

The protagonist is Salman Ali Zaidi, a Pakistani-American university lecturer, "... the archetypal fucking immigrant in the land of opportunities" who has distanced himself from his roots in order to find a place in the new world, only to realise that he is adrift, "... a twenty-eight-year-old brown man living in a shitty apartment, doing a shitty job that doesn’t pay much and has no hope of tenure."

As a young boy, he had listened to his grandfather's romantic tales of dethroned Mughal princesses running tea shops and guardian jinn dwelling in trees, fascinated but disbelieving. But on his grandfather's death, he begins reading the old man's books, papers and journal, and begins a quest for the truth of his grandfather's past that will take him into the heart of Islamic mysticism and unveil his grandfather's startling legacy - and give him both his roots, and his future.

A complex, beautifully crafted story that swept me up and would not let me go.