Changes

|title=Alif the Unseen

|author=G Willow Wilson

|publisher=Corvus

|date=September 2012

|website=http://www.gwillowwilson.com

|video=

|summary=This is really a genre-crossing phenomenon: a political/IT thriller (no understanding of IT required) that allows magic and fantasy to seep in until we're in a totally different world. Oh, and [[:Category:Neil Gaiman|Neil Gaiman's]] a fan so that says it all.

}}

Alif lives under an alias and he has a good reason for that: he's a hakinista in an Arabian oil producing country that, to put it mildly, doesn't encourage free speech. He sells IT know-how and wizardy to any covert organisation that works against the government, their agenda unimportant as long as the aim is the downfall of their oppression. But all that's about to change as Alif falls in love and, as it's the wrong girl at the wrong time, is spurned. His response to this romantic let down is to create a computer programme that will identify her internet activity by her individual typing pattern. Unfortunately what works for him also works against him. It's captured by the notoriously dangerous government censor 'The Hand' who also wants Alif and his hidden network of colleagues. Now Alif runs to preserve his life and those who have trusted him, his only possession an ancient manuscript from his former love. Just a book, albeit one that's accompanied by myths and old wives' tales rendering it irrelevant a logical world. However, sometimes the most desperate of times requires more than logic and, sometimes, a mere book of stories may be more than it seems.