Travel with the jinn: a novel of ambitious, contemplative, and humorous journeys, by Jamal Mahjoub

Traveling with the Jinn, the fifth book by Jamal Mahjoub, a novel of ambitious journeys, contemplative and sometimes humorous, focused on the enjoyable relationship between father and his young son during their trip in Europe in a silver-blue Peugeot car, model 504. The narrator father, born between continental rifts and nature in Europe, discovers that he is both an "insider" and an "intruder" at the same time. Yasin Zahir, a man carrying two passports and speaking more than two languages, is on the verge of divorce from his English wife, Eileen. Encouraged by her, he spends some time with his son Leo while she remains in Denmark exchanging ideas with distant cousins in Denmark. Yasin and his seven-year-old son Leo embark on an educational journey driven by the fear of losing his son. Yasin, who was born in Khartoum to a Sudanese father and an English mother, now thirty-seven years old, is forced to confront the complexity of his origins and struggles to choose the appropriate way to convey this to his son. When Leo asked him who the Arab plunderers in the Crusades were, his father replied, "They... are us." As Yasin extended his journey from Denmark to Germany, Luxembourg, Paris, Provence, and then Spain, he imagined newspapers with headlines like "Islamic extremist kidnaps his son." The Guardian newspaper wrote about the novel: Its captivating and striking narration conveys the story of traveling with the Jinn with a compassionate and authentic voice to a wide readership. Number of pages: 412.