Mayhoud and the Jinni: A riveting tale of jinns and spirits

‘Mayhoud and the Jinni’ is a story of a good, principled man wronged by an arbitrary decision; his struggles to get over it; and his gripping interactions with jinns and spirits. 

It’s the latest novel by veteran Qatari journalist and writer Ahmed Abdel Malek, after his first ‘Ahdan Al-Manafy’ (The Embraces of Exiles) came out in 2005. The story is told in first-person by the titular protagonist, Mayhoud, who was also the protagonist in ‘Ahdan Al-Manafy’. Malek is also the former editor-in-chief of The Peninsula.   The novel opens with Mayhoud — a diligent, hardworking employee — one day in 2007 receiving an out-of-the-blue termination letter signed by a minister. “Only two lines.. They ended my career and destroyed my grand dreams of serving my homeland. Merely two lines cut the vein that connected me to Warda and reduced me to nothing.”