Shubnum Khan
South Africa
Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her 2024 novel The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is a sweeping literary gothic coming-of-age novel set on the east coast of South Africa. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick. Shubnum’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, HuffPost, O the Oprah Magazine, The Sunday Times, New Contrast, and Saraba Magazine. She has a degree in Media Studies and a Master's in English from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a writing fellow at OMI’s Ledig House in New York and an Octavia Butler Fellow at Jack Jones Literary Arts. She was shortlisted for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship for African Writers and selected as a Mellon Fellow at Stellenbosch University in 2019.
She lives in Durban, where the warmest waters meet the bluest skies.
(Source: author’s website)
What you can't miss:
Sana and Meena will never meet. The two women share little beyond Akbar Manzil, the sprawling mansion they call home. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten. Full of questions about her new home, Sana is drawn to the deserted east wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects – and to the locked door at its end, unopened for decades. Soon, Sana begins to discover the tangled, troubling history of the house, awakening the memories of the house itself and dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone –living and dead – at Akbar Manzil.
Reviews:
Love, loss and life are the themes that weave through this tale of three generations of Muslim women living in suburban South Africa. Gradually, the past merges with the present as the novel meanders through their lives, uncovering the secrets people keep, the words they swallow and the emotions they elect to mute. For this family, faintly detectable through the sharp spicy aromas that find their way out of Khadeejah's kitchen, the scent of tragedy is always threatening. Eventually it will bring this family together. If not, it will tear them apart.
Review:
News24
