The Bird King

From award-winning author G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King is an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. G. Willow Wilson's debut novel Alif the Unseen established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. The Bird King tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret - he can draw maps of places he's never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan's surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realising that she will see Hassan's gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls? As Fatima and Hassan traverse Spain to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.

2 editions

hardcover, 440 pages

Published March 12, 2019 by Grove Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-8021-2903-1
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Reviews

Taylor Drew reviewed The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

On having a little faith

4.0 stars

I feel like everything about this book was erratic and unexpected, but nonetheless I find myself very weepy at the end of it all--I'm not even sure what to say.

It's not very often that I get to read a book originally in English where the white man is the enemy in such a clear and articulated way. Yet the enemy is also somehow something or someone else. It's a hard to describe feeling, but it just reminds me that we all need to believe in something and have a little faith. Be gracious to others, regardless of any differences there may be between you, and just do your best with courage. That's all there is.