Abstract
Abstract: Winner of the 2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen brings some new perspectives into the fantasy genre with its Middle Eastern setting and its basis in Islamic mythologies. It generates additional energies by mixing its fantastic elements with elements from other (very Western) genres (including cyberpunk science fiction and the technothriller). At the same time, it makes extensive use of the motif of parallel worlds, which has long been a staple in fantasy fiction. The parallel worlds of Alif the Unseen are particularly interesting in the way they converge, intersect, and bleed into one another at various points, just as the novel also collapses the boundaries between genres. Ultimately, the collapsing boundaries of Alif the Unseen deconstruct Orientalist polar oppositions between East and West by allowing worlds that might be associated with one or the other to meet and interact as equals within the novel.
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