“It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. To want something so much—to hold it in your arms—and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it.”
Renee Adhieh’s “The Wrath and the Dawn”, is set against a vivid, yet turbulent Arabian backdrop. Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, the story is almost a retelling of the classic tale. The Caliph of Khorasan, Khalid, is not a man liked by many. Every night he takes a bride, and after a mere day, kills her, with a silk cord around the neck. The protagonist, Shahrzad, is driven entirely by vengeance, as her best friend is killed after becoming the Caliph’s wife. Shahrzad voluntarily signs up to wed Khalid, if only to retaliate and murder the Caliph.
Shahrzad woos the stone-faced king with a story the night of their wedding. She refuses to complete it, with the promise to complete it the next night. This grants her an extra day, one more than all of her predecessors who were murdered at dawn. One night turns into many as the Caliph is quite astonished by Shahrzad’s charm and quick-witted retorts. She refuses to fall prey to Khalid’s attempts to intimidate her into submission. As days pass, as she stays at the palace, more and more secrets of the Caliph come to light- secrets of a man, deeply traumatized by a past he had no control over. As Shahrzad unearths pieces of truth that Khalid wishes to keep well tucked away, she is torn between her loyalty towards her best friend, whom she vowed to avenge and her attempts to truly understand the Caliph, who seems no more than a misunderstood boy, struck by ill-fate. As much as Khalid becomes more vulnerable as the story progresses, there are also moments where Shahrzad has stark clarity of what Khalid has done in the past- making her even more torn on whether to put her faith in the boy king.
When Shahrzad discovers the reason behind Khalid’s murders of his wives, she is devastated. She is left to decide how to end the vicious cycle of deaths. The story also adds in an element of magic, making the tale seem all the more fairy-tale-like, like the original Arabian Nights.
As much as Shahrzad’s and Khalid’s love-hate dynamic is the pivotal focus of the story, the story is all the more entrancing because of Adhieh’s style of writing. Everything from the food, to the architecture to the relationships between characters is such a pleasure to read, due to the colourful and vivid descriptions, which are by no means overpowering.
In all, while there is an element of an enemies-to-lovers plot ingrained in the story, The Wrath and the Dawn is an exquisite retelling of the Arabian Nights and is sure to leave lovers of fairy tales hooked. It is the phenomenal writing and world-building that makes this book a must read.