Review of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years—Multi-faceted Hauntings

Looking for a beautiful, lyrical haunted house story unlike anything you’ve read before? The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan came out last January and was first on my list most anticipated 2024 reads, but I didn’t get to it until the end of the year. However, I’m glad I waited until I was able to take my time and savor this slow and atmospheric story! 

When teenage Sana and her father move into Akbar Manzil, a South African mansion now broken up into apartments for an eclectic group of Indian immigrants, her father hopes they’ve finally found a place they can truly call home. Sana is skeptical—the change of scenery has not freed her from the complicated grief for her mother’s death or the guilt-riddled hauntings from her deceased twin sister. But as she begins to explore the old house and gets to know its tenants, Sana becomes obsessed with uncovering the tragic story of the estate’s past. Discarded objects and a hidden room in the abandoned east wing contain mementos of a young woman named Meena and her doomed love for the original master of the house. Also hidden in the house’s darkest corners is a desolate djinn who both dreads and yearns for Meena’s story to be known. Akbar Manzil is haunted. By the ambitions, failed dreams, and gnawing regrets of its inhabitants. By a legacy of jealousy, bigotry, hatred, and violence. And by a djinn who wears a dead woman’s face.

As so often in Gothic novels, the house in this book is a character of its own. Akbar Manzil seems to have a vague sentience and brief passages of the story are told through the house’s point of view—which includes the perspective of critters that infest it, such as the bats in the rafters. The house resists change and decidedly does not want its past being uncovered, which puts it at odds with the djinn that lurks within its walls. The house is repeatedly described as being woken up by Sana’s interest and attention. But despite its sentience, it’s unclear that the house has any agency to act on the events that are unfolding.

But the most fascinating aspect of this book is the many different angles from which it explores the concept of a haunting. One of Sana’s new neighbors has experienced what seems to be a traditional haunting—one night, she awoke to strange noises and saw the ghostly figure of a long-haired woman in a white nightgown. Sana, too, believes she sees the ghost of Meena, but she appears to be a friendly visitation, pointing Sana in the right direction during an emergency. The reader knows, however, that this is no ghost but rather the djinn who, though usually invisible, can sometimes take on the form of the woman it had grown so attached to. The djinn can also manifest some poltergeist-like abilities, knocking objects over and making people feel a slight touch or hear a whisper of their name. While others experience the djinn as a haunting, the djinn is experiencing a haunting of its own. It is living inside a horror story that no one else can see—the walls drip blood, visions of violence flash in its memory, and the djinn is rarely able to have any effect on the events unfolding around it, even as they spiral into its worst nightmare. Meanwhile, there is one literal ghost in the story—or is there? Sana is plagued by her jealous twin sister, who remains eternally childish and petulant, trying to taunt and tease Sana into joining her in the afterlife. One might be tempted to read this haunting as a figurative manifestation of Sana’s survivor’s guilt. But the sister’s ghost knows and sees things that Sana cannot…

If you love haunted house books, then you definitely need to check out The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years. You can find it on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or buy a copy online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!