From debut author Hadeer Elsbai comes the first book in an incredibly powerful new duology, set wholly in a new world, but inspired by modern Egyptian history.
Read on to learn more about The Daughters of Izdihar, writing, her publishing journey, and more!
Hi, Hadeer! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! I’m a librarian who is every bit the librarian cliché, meaning I enjoy research and content management a little too much, I’m introverted, I have a cat, I’ve made books my personality, and I wear outrageously patterned dresses. I also spent several non-consecutive years growing up in Cairo, Egypt, my parents’ homeland, which influenced a lot of my habits and writing. I’ve written short stories before but The Daughters of Izdihar is my first novel.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember, which fueled my always overactive imagination. My mom says I learned to talk unusually early, and I was always telling tall tales with a flair of drama. I’m pretty sure I wanted to be an actress as a child, but as I grew up and became more shy and introverted and unwilling to be perceived in that particular way, I channelled all the drama in my head into writing.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading is one of the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine.
The book that made me want to become an author is Aurian by Maggie Furey.
A book I can’t stop thinking about is the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, of which I’m a massive fan.
Your debut novel, The Daughters of Izdihar, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Sapphic suffragettes use elemental magic.
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect a somewhat slice-of-life fantasy that tackles patriarchy and examines the intersections of injustice and privilege. There’s sapphic romance, hidden easter eggs for Egyptian readers, trope subversions, female friendships, a vast array of female characters, a magic school, and elemental magic.
Where did the inspiration for The Daughters of Izdihar come from?
A big part of the plot is based a lot around the Egyptian women’s suffrage movement in the 1950s. The leader of that movement, Doria Shafik, heavily inspired Malak Mamdouh, one my main characters (I read an entire dissertation on Doria Shafik to suss out specific details about her life!). I also read about the Egyptian feminist movement in the 1920s, led by Huda Shaarawi. The book’s vibes, however, are inspired by two very disparate things: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s fantasy of manners novel, The Beautiful Ones (which I highly recommend), and a War and Peace inspired musical called Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. This will probably mean absolutely nothing to you if you’re not familiar with either work, but if you know you know.
Oddly, though the comparison to Avatar the Last Airbender is very obvious considering the magic system, I didn’t consciously realize it had inspired me until I started writing the second book, where all the plot beats I kept considering kept going back to Avatar!
Can you tell us a bit about worldbuilding for this duology?
Basically, I read a lot of books about 19th-century Egypt: lots of academic tomes but also lots of accounts of European visitors to Egypt during that time, particularly Edward Lane, who wrote a hyperdetailed account of his experiences in An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. It’s very rare to see genre fiction inspired by modern Egypt rather than Ancient Egypt, so I wanted to be sure to include loads of details. Then I wanted a religion that would be a kind of mishmash of the Abrahamic faiths as well as the Ancient Egyptian faith. And of course, I needed a magic system, which I wanted to be something that evoked classic fantasy but was also very visual, and what’s more classic than the classical elements?
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I really, really enjoyed writing all the scenes and banter between Nehal and her husband Nico. The arranged marriage trope, as a subset of the forced proximity trope, is something that’s always fascinated me and that I hope to explore in other novels at some point. It was really fun to throw two characters who are total opposites into a marriage and force them to deal with each other’s quirks, especially considering I don’t follow through to the traditional outcome of the trope.
What was your journey of getting The Daughters of Izdihar published?
I had a pretty straightforward trajectory. I wrote a book, which happened to be my first book, I revised it, I queried it, and I got an agent. In between, I participated in two pitch contests, but it was querying the traditional way that got me an agent. Then my agent and I revised the book once, sent it out on submission, and that was that!
The interesting thing (for me, at least) is that after going on submission, my book went to auction during the November 2020 election, specifically, when the entire country was waiting to see whether Georgia woud go blue, and then things happened with some fandoms and some memes…anyway, it was a very wild time on the Internet and a great distraction for me.
In any case, generally speaking I recognize that I’ve had a much easier path than some folks, which I’m grateful for.
What’s next for you?
By the time this interview is published I’ll have hopefully overcome the crushing reality that is my book 2 deadline, and after that I’ve got a historical fantasy novel in the works! It’ll be really refreshing to finally start working earnestly on something new and very different, especially since I’ve been working on The Daughters of Izdihar since 2017!
Lastly, are there any 2023 releases our readers should look out for?
There are so many books I’m excited about, and I can’t list all of them here, so I’ll just highlight two other Arab-inspired fantasies coming out: Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim and The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem, the latter of which is specifically Egyptian-inspired and is written by an Egyptian-American writer like myself!
