he era of this tale is our own, but displaced sideways in the multiverse. In the continuum of this tale, the alternate political machinations surrounding World War I resulted in the survival of the Ottoman Empire, and now all of North Africa is a seamless part of the Arab ekumene. And the most prominent city in this part of the world is El Iskandryia, sprawling home to rich and poor. Here—except for long flashback chapters detailing the protagonist's backstory—is where all our action will take place.
Although the book opens on the aftermath of a murder scene, featuring the decrepit yet canny foreign-born city cop named Felix Abrinsky, our hero proves to be the murdered woman's nephew, Ashraf al-Mansur. Raised in various locations abroad by a negligent mother, Ashraf (also "Raf" or "ZeeZee") has till now led the life of a minor thug, however uncommon his talents and principles. Summoned to El Iskandryia by Aunt Nafisa, a relative he never met, 25-year-old Raf finds himself being groomed to marry a rich man's daughter, Zara bint-Hamzah. It seems Aunt Nafisa has her eye on a dowry that measures in the hundreds of millions. But Raf and the strong-willed Zara don't hit it off, the engagement is canceled, and Raf's future is uncertain.
It's at this point that Nafisa is murdered, and Raf becomes her sole heir, which includes the responsibility of watching over his young cousin, Hani. But Nafisa's murder has opened up a writhing mess of deceit and chicanery lying beneath the posh and hypocritical social circuits of El Iskandryia. As an untutored "pashazade," or nobleman, Raf finds himself struggling to untangle the Byzantine relations of the city's inhabitants. He has to find his aunt's killer and clear his own name—Felix and company initially suspect Raf of his aunt's murder—before whoever killed his aunt starts gunning for him. And his only helpers are Zara, the girl he spurned, and Hani, a child hacker with a mysterious robot dog.
Middle Eastern SF noir
When asked to nominate science fiction that deals with Islamic culture, readers with long memories may recall George Alec Effinger's Arabic trilogy involving Marid Audran, which appeared from 1987 to 1991. Of more recent vintage, we find Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt from 2002. But aside from these, and Bruce Sterling's famous short story "We See Things Differently" (1989), there has been remarkably little material in the genre that focuses on this large portion of humanity under Muslim banners.
It's guaranteed, then, that a new book with such a focus will stand out from the pack, at least at a glance. But whether it holds up upon reading relies as always on the author's vision and talents. I can happily report that Grimwood is exceptionally gifted in both his inventiveness and prose creation. This novel conjures up a unique world in sensual and intellectual depth, populates it with engaging characters and spins a fiendishly convoluted plot.
We don't get to see a lot of the world outside El Iskandryia, and so any historical twists and turns that non-Muslim cultures may have taken during the 100 years of this alternate timeline are never fully limned. In fact, there are so many similarities between Raf's continuum and ours, down to brand names and institutions, that we wonder a bit how critical the 1914 changes could have been, if so much stayed on track. But this limitation in scope is offset by the 1001 splendid details of the wholly imagined El Iskandryia, which becomes a character in its own right. The many poetic descriptions of the city—take the one that opens Chapter 41, for instance—read like real-world tributes to Paris or London or New York or Rome, investing the metropolis and its inhabitants with a naturalistic weight.
Grimwood fills this burg with vivid personages, starting with Felix and moving on through Raf and Zara and Hani. Raf's seedy past endows him with a thickness of backstory that makes all his current actions and motives understandable. Raf's been augmented biologically, and Grimwood riffs ingeniously on many tropes from the cyberpunk canon.
As for the plot, it turns out to hinge on entirely personal and petty motives, no global conspiracies or evil-genius shenanigans. This kind of noir underpinning is much more satisfying than any kind of thriller/espionage MacGuffins, and places the whole narrative on a more believable and empathizable level.
Written with zest, panache and wit, concerned with universal human emotions in an exotic speculative milieu and boasting a suspenseful mystery, Pashazade performs an "Open, Sesame" on a casket of wonders.
