The Djinn’s Apple
Nardeen Baramika is a scholar with a desire to be a doctor and work in the hospital known as the Bimaristan. She has a prodigious memory and the skill to achieve her ambition, encouraged by her father to the distress of her mother, fearful of the shifting political sands of the court of Harun Al-Rashid, the famous Abbasid caliph. At the beginning of this short novel, Nardeen becomes the sole survivor of her family following an attack on their home, seemingly in search of a mysterious manuscript. Narrowly escaping becoming a slave, she is taken under the wing of Muallim Ishaq, who enables her to develop her medical career, including ministering to Queen Zubeida. However, Nardeen is determined to plot the demise of the man she believes murdered her family, but who can she truly trust?
This fast-moving story is told in the voice of a tough heroine who copes with her grief by putting the knowledge gained from her father and her new guardian to good use in helping people but also uses it in seeking revenge. The history of Iraq during the golden age of the city of Baghdad, and the flourishing of culture and learning that took place there, form the backdrop to the novel. The way people fell in and out of political favour is integral to the plot.
There are still too few translations into English among books for children and YA readers. Although the spread of languages among translations has widened in recent years, they are still mainly from western Europe, so it is particularly pleasing to read a book originally written in Arabic by an author from Algeria rendered into English by an award-winning translator.
