Alif the Unseen (Wilson) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for ALIF THE UNSEEN … then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the world created by G. Willow Wilson. Do you find it absorbing, realistic yet touched with magic? Or is it silly and overdone? Which characters do you find most interesting, humorous, endearing … or less than endearing?

2. What are the ways in which the author juxtaposes the modern world of computing with the traditional Arab world of Islam?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: Consider the issue of sin: if a sin is committed in virtual reality, is it still a sin? What are your thoughts?

4. What do you make of Alif's character? What of his observation that "the few Americans he had encountered in his lifetime had all seemed flat to him, as if freedom weakened one's capacity for intense emotion by demanding too little of it"?

5. When Alif looks into the eyes of Vikram the Vampire, he sees a "predatory, unnerving humor, like the musing of a leopard in a pen of goats." Care to unpack that description of Vikram … what it might reveal (or not reveal) about his character? How do you come to see Vikram as the novel unfolds?

6. When Vikram lectures Alif about cyberspace invisibility, he says, "Now you are more interested in the veil between man and photon than the one between man and jinn." What is he getting at?

7. How do the genies Alif and Dina encounter in the Empty Quarter upend your expectations of the typical genies of myth?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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