Aliya to the Infinite City

An inventive new fantasy adventure, with its roots in the stories of the Middle East, Aliya to the Infinite City is a treat for fans of the magical school genre. Aliya’s life with her grandfather in Cairo is ordinary, slow walks to the corner shop, dinners of spicy sausages and eggs, feeding the street cats. But then his behaviour changes, he starts disappearing for hours at a time, and then suddenly they up and move, leaving everything behind. With increasing speed, everything she has understood about the world and her family changes and in the kind of plot swerve that makes stories like this so exciting, Aliya is whisked off, by flying carpet no less, to a parallel Egypt and enrolled as a student at the Infinitum School of Time Travel and Related Subjects, motto: Witness. Record. Reflect (and never interfere with the past). Aliya’s lineage and her inherited talents make her a target for the evil forces her grandfather tried so hard to escape. The publisher describes the story as ‘epic’ and it does feel satisfyingly big in scope and ideas, the background giving it a freshness too. There are small details too that make the story stand out. I particularly enjoyed the description of her grandfather naming the street cats, insisting on ‘Arabic names that began in the back of the throat and shot over the tongue as if they were late for an appointment: Kharboush, Zoronfil and Abu Samak.’ This is Laila Rifaat’s debut, and she is an author to watch.