Using the sword, pen, body, and voice, four women confront a rebellion and the older, stranger threat behind it.

After his father's death, Jevick travels to Olondria, the distant land he has only read about in books and has longed to visit, and finds himself enchanted by the exotic land and haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl, Jissavet.

In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return. Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, "The White Mosque," after the Mennonites'...