‘The city of Durban on South Africa’s East Coast falls psychically somewhere between Miami and New Orleans,’ author Lauren Beukes wrote in The New York Times. ‘It’s sugarcanesticky and portside-seedy, a little glam, a little Miss Havisham. Add vervet monkeys and a turbulent colonial history and Durban Gothic should already be its own genre. That it’s not means Shubnum Khan gets to set the tone with her magical and only gently haunted haunted-house novel The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years.’
Published locally under the title The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil, Shubnum’s latest novel has been getting rave reviews – and not just from the probably-only-slightlybiased ex-Saffers. In January 2024, it was chosen as an Indie Next Pick (by independent bookstores across the US voting for their favourite books) as well as a LibraryReads pick (voted for by library staff across the US), and in February it made The New York Times’ Editors’ Choice list.
The story centres on Akbar Manzil, a once-grand estate just inland from the coast of Durban. It was built in 1920 by Akbar Ali Khan, who left India itching for adventure. His new wife Jahanara reckons it’s just a holiday ‘to see the lions’, but when they land in Durban he instantly falls in love with its rolling sugarcane valleys, old mango trees and sparkling sea. To Jahanara’s utter dismay, Akbar decides that they need to start a new life here, complete with a decadent palace on the hill and a gardenful of exotic animals.
By 2014,
