Guest post written by The City Beyond The Stars author Zohra Nabi
Zohra Nabi grew up inventing stories for her two younger sisters. She studied law at Cambridge and Oxford universities, but secretly dreamed of being an author. Now she lives in London, browsing bookshops and writing magical adventures. She’s the author of The Kingdom Over the Sea series.
About The City Beyond The Stars: The captivating sequel to “perfect for fans of Philip Pullman and Tahereh Mafi” (Booklist) The Kingdom Over the Sea follows Yara and her friends as they change the fate of the kingdom and their magic forever.
I’ve always been fascinated by the power storytellers have. Their power to hold an audience in their palm – to shape the world with their words and make time stand still for as long as they can spin a story. Perhaps that’s why I particularly love books about time – there’s a sense of the author pushing the boundaries of their own storytelling, and commenting on their own ability to bend and shape the past.
When I first began drafting my first middle grade novel, The Kingdom over the Sea, I knew I wanted to create a magic that found its power in verse – from the particular rhyme, rhythm and flow of words. However, almost from the same moment, I knew there was a more powerful magic lurking in the wings of this world. Storytelling magic. And after some more thought, I knew this magic would be linked to time – magic that could transport its users to the past, magic that could change the past, and the present along with it. Perhaps as a result, my second book The City beyond the Stars is very concerned with time. When our hero Yara Sulimayah is sent out to find the new storytelling magic, she travels first to her old family home, and then to the ruins of an ancient city. She discovers remnants of her family’s past, her community’s past and the past of her own culture. And Yara is far from alone – everyone in The City Beyond the Stars is reckoning with their past, and trying to come to terms with the terrible things that have happened to them, and in some cases the terrible things they have inflicted on others. Everyone is trying to hold on to the past. Yet at the same time they must keep going forward in a world which is moving further away from that past all the time. How do you do it? How does anyone do it?
Books about time often have a reputation for being overly high-concept or complicated. But my favourite books contend with our relationship with the past and future, and ask big, boundary pushing questions. I certainly couldn’t have written The City beyond the Stars without their influence.
A WRINKLE IN TIME – MADELEINE L’ENGLE
A Wrinkle in Time is of course not strictly a book about time travel – its title refers to the ‘tesseract’ which allows awkward teenager Meg, her precocious brother Charles Wallace and friend Calvin O’Keefe to travel to other planets instantaneously. Yet Madeleine L’Engle uses the futuristic conventions of sci-fi to make the book’s message of the power of love, warmth and humanity all the more profound, as Meg faces up to the terrifying totalitarian regime of IT. It’s a book that defies plot summaries– its beauty is in how it unfolds, and in the wisdom its characters take on as they develop.
THE DARK IS RISING – SUSAN COOPER
Time acts strangely in the second book of ‘The Dark is Rising’ series – the protagonist Will Stanton is taken out of time to learn of his destiny as an ‘Old One’ – someone destined to fight against the dark, a fight that has been going on since the days of King Arthur. Like A Wrinkle in Time, the manipulation of time in The Dark is Rising serves to heighten the stakes of conflict between forces of good and evil. But perhaps the most skilful use of time travel in the novel involves Will travelling to a Medieval Christmas gathering, where he learns the full extent of what it means to be an Old One, and witnesses the beginning of a betrayal. Here, time travel poignantly illuminates feelings of regret and loss over growing up, and the events of our past that we cannot change.
A TALE OF TIME CITY – DIANA WYNNE JONES
This book is certainly the most high-concept of the books on this list, and is in the tradition of British sci-fi classics such as Doctor Who. It is the story of Vivian, an evacuee who is kidnapped and brought to Time City, whose Observers are tasked with making sure that history stays on its correct course – but instability is threatening all of space and time itself… Wynne Jones is a brilliant writer, and this story has all the humour and heart characteristic of her work. But I think what makes this story particularly special is its use of time travel to create an image of a fragile world falling apart. Wynne Jones herself was an evacuee during the Second World War, and ably conveys what it’s like to feel as though you are at the end of the world, without a home to go to.
TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN – PHILIPPA PEARCE
Tom’s Midnight Garden is such a rare and beautiful book – like A Wrinkle in Time it defies description. It is ostensibly about a boy forced to spend his summer with this boring aunt and uncle in their flat – who at night, when the clock strikes thirteen, discovers a secret garden, and a Victorian child, Hattie. It is a beautiful modern fairy tale, where time travel becomes an escape from loneliness and the meeting point of two kindred spirits – something that can only become more bittersweet as time continues to pass. It’s a book among the very best of classic children’s writing.
ALIYA TO THE INFINITE CITY – LAILA RIFAAT
I think this recent release is only out in the UK, but I heartily recommend getting creative and finding yourself a copy. It follows Aliya, a young girl whisked off to a time travel academy, where people from all across Egypt’s history come together to further the cause of adventure and discovery. As Aliya learns more about her parents’ past at the academy and the nature of time travel, she is forced to make important moral choices and decide what kind of person she’s going to be. It’s a brilliant story, with a particular gift for bringing characters from the past and future to vivid life.
THE 1001 NIGHTS
This might seem a strange one to include, given that time travel is not a particularly prominent feature of the 1001 nights. But the brilliant intricacy of the tales, which layer story within story within story, add a strange feeling of the reader travelling through time. We are taken from day to night, from desert to city, palace to ruin. The storyteller pulls the reader through time so skilfully that no matter where we are taken, every story feels perfectly linked to the next – Scheherazade need only tug on her to storytelling thread, and we are back in the central narrative, anxious to hear the next story. It remains a timeless reminder of the power of storytelling to transport the reader through time and space.
