Where the Jinn Consult

Where the Jinn Consult is the second of Soraya Antonius’s two astounding novels set in British Mandatory Palestine. It begins where The Lord left off, in the aftermath of the 1936 Revolt, which saw the death of the young Palestinian resistance figure Tareq.

The life of Jerusalem socialite Maliha al-Ghal is thrown into disarray when Maliha’s husband, a politician on the Arab Higher Committee, is suddenly deported by the British. Maliha learns to make do the best she can under these diminished circumstances; meanwhile, her best friend Violet Dhaishi, a silly, materialistic hostess of dinner parties and lover of all things English, continues with her shopping and fundraisers and neglects her husband and children to conduct an affair with a British officer.

Shielded behind their privilege, they turn a blind eye to the escalating Zionist violence, to the bombs exploding first Cinema Rex, then at Damascus Gate, then at the King David Hotel. They are completely oblivious to their slow dispossession, and by the time they realize, it is of course far too late.

A blistering satire of the complacency and ignorance of the Palestinian bourgeoisie in the last days of the British Mandate, Where the Jinn Consult is Antonius’s masterpiece, written with a syntactic expansiveness that is unlike anything else in English literature. A cry of outrage at the injustices meted out upon the Palestinian people, Where the Jinn Consult is a novel as timely now as it is utterly vital.