Alif the Unseen

Please note that this e-galley is only available to Canadian NetGalley users.
Alif the Unseen will be published in the United States by Grove Press in July 2012.

A tour-de-force of a debut that blends classic fantasy -- the fascinating, frightening, sometimes-invisible world of the djinn -- that's genies to some of us -- with the 21st-century reality of a super-hacker in mortal danger in a repressive security state on the Arabian Gulf.

Alif (that's his handle) is a brilliant young superhacker working out of his mother's small apartment, and his computer has just been breached. While Alif scrambles to protect his clients -- dissidents and outlaws alike, whoever needs to hide their digital traces, he and his friends realize that they've been found by 'the Hand' -- maybe a person, maybe a program, but definitely able to find anyone, and that could lead to prison, or worse. Alif, with the help of his childhood friend Dina, an ancient book sent to him in secret by his lost love (who may be frighteningly connected to the Hand) and a terrifying protector who almost looks human, must go underground -- or rather, find a way into the hidden world of the djinn. They wrote the mysterious book centuries ago, and have knowledge that might just allow Alif to infiltrate the most sophisticated information technology the world has ever seen, and perhaps save himself, his loved ones, and freedom itself. With shades of Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, William Gibson, and the timeless Thousand and One Nights, Alif the Unseen is a tour-de-force debut with major potential -- a masterful, addictive blend of the ancient and the more-than-modern, smuggled inside an irresistible page-turner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G. WILLOW WILSON was born in New Jersey in 1982 and raised in Colorado. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Butterfly Mosque and the comics Air and Vixen. She divides her time between Cairo and Seattle.

Advance praise for Alif the Unseen

“G. Willow Wilson has a deft hand with myth and with magic, and the kind of smart, honest writing mind that knits together and bridges cultures and people. You should read what she writes.”
— Neil Gaiman, author of Stardust and American Gods

“Driven by a hot ionic charge between higher math and Arabian myth, G. Willow Wilson conjures up a tale of literary enchantment, political change, and religious mystery.”
— Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz

"[T]his year’s improbably charming book about hackers is Alif the Unseen. . . . Spirited fun."
-- New York Times

“An ambitious, well-told, and wonderful story. Alif the Unseen is one of those novels that has you rushing to find what else the author has written, and eagerly anticipating what she'll do next.”
— Matt Ruff, author of Fool on the Hill and The Mirage

“A Golden Compass for the Arab Spring.”
— Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts

“One of the most compelling narratives you'll read this year, Alif offers masterful insight into contemporary Middle Eastern societies whose ongoing transformations are as unexpected and profound as those in our own. It is also a powerful reminder of how far fantasy has come since Tolkien.”
— Jack Womack, author of Random Acts of Senseless Violence

“Willow Wilson is an awesome talent. She made her own genre and rules over it. Magical, cinematic, pure storytelling. It's nothing like anything. A brilliant fiction debut.”
— Michael Muhammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores

“Alif the Unseen is a terrific metaphysical thriller, impossible to put down. The fantastical world Alif inhabits—at once recognizable and surreal, visible and invisible—is all the more fantastic for the meticulously detailed Koranic theology and Islamic mythology Wilson expertly reveals. A multicultural Harry Potter for the digital age.”
— Hooman Majd, author of The Ayatollahs’ Democracy and The Ayatollah Begs to Differ