The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil: By Shubnum Khan

Sana and Meena will never meet. The two women share little beyond Akbar Manzil, the sprawling mansion they call home. When Meena fell in love with the owner of the house, it was the grandest residence on South Africa’s east coast, near Durban. Eight decades later, when Sana and her father move to the house, the latest of Akbar Manzil’s long list of tenants, it is in near-ruins, crumbling, shabby, and dark. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten.

Full of questions about her new home, Sana is drawn to the deserted east wing—home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects – and to the locked door at its end, unopened for decades. Soon, Sana begins to discover the tangled, troubling history of the house, awakening the memories of the house itself and dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone—living and dead—at Akbar Manzil.

Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning, The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.