NPR

Language Has Magic In 'The Candle And The Flame'

Nafiza Azad creates a fantastical yet believable Silk Road city in her new young adult novel, building a world of humans and djinns, spices and sounds, woven through with Urdu, Arabic and Hindi.

A fantastical silk road city comes to life in Nafiza Azad's richly detailed debut novel, The Candle and the Flame.

Fatima works as a messenger in the melting pot of Noor, a bustling desert city where humans and djinn live side by side. Once Noor was only a human city, but an attack by a chaotic tribe of djinn called the Shayateen wiped out the entire population — all

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