When a Western-trained psychologist returns to Zanzibar, the stories he once dismissed as superstition rise up to meet him—alive, layered, and rooted in blood.
Raised in Canada and shaped by science, he believed identity was a matter of will. But in the heat and hush of his ancestral island, whispers of jinn and witches begin to unearth a deeper truth—one carved by exile, memory, and spirits that do not forget.
Told in two intertwined timelines—“modernity” and “antiquity”—Jinn in the Family blends poetic fiction with cultural myth, weaving Arab, African, and Indian lineages into a haunting tapestry of inheritance. This novel asks what is lost when diasporic people abandon identity and the unseen, and what might be reclaimed when we finally listen to what was never gone.
More than folklore. More than horror. This is the story of what lives in the quiet—and what refuses to die.
R. Y. ABDULREHMAN is a clinical and consulting psychologist whose work explores the deep intersections of culture, identity, and social justice. He is the author of several books, includingDeveloping Anti-Racist Cultural Competence and co-author of Movies, Miniseries, and Multiculturalism: Using Films and Television to Understand Culture and Social Justice.
Dr. Abdulrehman is the host of Different People, a podcast that tackles the difficult conversations around racism, and his work has been recognized by the Society of Consulting Psychology for excellence in diversity, equity, and inclusion. His compelling TEDx talk, “But Where Are You Really From? Resolving Unconscious Bias,” challenged audiences to confront everyday racism and sparked wider conversations on identity, belonging, and the power of self-awareness.
The founder of tesbias.com, he believes that insight into our unconscious biases can be the beginning of meaningful change. He has served as a professor at the University of Manitoba, Zanzibar University, the State University of Zanzibar, and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.
In 2024, he was named one of the 100 Most Fascinating Manitobans. Born to a Zanzibari family and having spent time practicing in the region, Dr. Abdulrehman was drawn into the rich lore and cultural storytelling of his ancestry. That journey inspired Jinn in the Family, his first poetic novel. When he isn’t writing or consulting, he can be found baking, cooking, or writing poetry.
Talking Jinn in the Family (No. 1 in Kindle Middle Eastern Literature, Sept 2025) with Mackling & Megarry — CJOB
Jinn in the Family, by Dr. R. Y. Abdulrehman is pitched as a novel but reads like a family’s collection of lore – historical, a little spooky, and impossible to tell if the tales are exaggerated or just the tip of the iceberg.
A Canadian psychologist of Zanzibari origin, Abdulrehman’s book switches between tales set in modernity and antiquity. The stories told by his great aunt about their family leech into the present day; history, colonization, revolution, immigration, and of course, jinn connections, are all woven together tightly, each facet impossible to separate.I found myself utterly mesmerized by each story, intrigued and bewitched, fascinated by Zanzibar’s complex history and the author’s family fables.
If you’re uptight about jinn stories and especially about people having ~ connections ~ to the jinn, don’t read this book. If you adore rich, lyrical stories that are definitely spooky but not quite horror, this is for you!!!
4.75 out of 5 Stars
– Zainab Bint Younus
Muslim Book Reviews
As a Kanaka Maoli (term for Native Hawaiians, emphasizing their identity, history, and connection to the land), the presence of the jinn echoes our own aumākua (family or personal guardian spirit, often a deified ancestor, that can take the form of an animal, plant, or other natural object), moʻo (lizard), Pueo (owl) Manō (shark) and akua—unseen forces who guide and test us. In Jinn in the Family, the narrator’s family’s spiritual knowing, passed down through wāhine and sensed in body, fragrance, and food, mirrors our own teachings of naʻauao and mana. His struggle to balance Western psychology with ancestral truth reflects the tensions we face in reclaiming ʻike kūpuna (ancestral experiences, knowledge, insights, perspectives, and practices.)
This book is a reminder that what was once dismissed as superstition is in truth sacred
intelligence. It affirms our right to remember, to feel, and to listen to the unseen.
– Ali’i Nui (King) Aleka Aipoalani
Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi
Hawaiian Kingdom
Jinn in the Family is a beautiful exploration of family, past and present. It’s engaging all the way through. A spiritual gourmet served up by our storyteller’s sumptuous family tree. The stories are so vivid that you feel like you, yourself, are a jinn watching the history unfold. As you delve into the pages, you will definitely start thinking about the strange moments from your own past that you explained away too easily. This book is like a great meal, savour it.
– Anthony Q. Farrell, award-winning television writer (The Office, Little Mosque)
Jinn in the Family is a richly imagined, deeply textured, and head-spinning work of fiction by Dr. Rehman Abdulrehman, a longtime colleague whose insights I’ve come to admire over the past 15 years during my time as a radio host. Drawing on his roots in Zanzibar and his professional life as a cross-cultural and clinical psychologist, Dr. Abdulrehman crafts a story that bridges cultures, continents, and cosmologies with remarkable care and depth.
This novel immerses readers in the spiritual, linguistic, and cultural fabric of the Zanzibari archipelago, interweaving Swahili, Arabic, Persian, and Kutch into a narrative that feels both ancient and immediate. The family at the heart of the story is vivid and unforgettable, animated by memory, longing, and a sense of unseen forces that shape their lives in profound ways.
Having interviewed people from all walks of life over the years, I’ve rarely encountered a story, or a novel, that illuminated an unfamiliar part of the world for me with such vivid, layered detail. Jinn in the Family is a must-read for anyone drawn to fiction that explores the borders between the mystical and the real, the ancestral and the modern. At a time of deep intercultural fracture, this book builds bridges. It doesn’t just entertain; it transforms.
– Terry Macleod
Former CBC Radio Journalist & Host across Canada, Actor, Social Worker.
Jinn in the Family is a masterwork of narrative reclamation—an evocative and genre-defying blend of memoir, folklore, oral history, and cultural critique. It stands as a vital counter-narrative that resists the deficit lenses through which African, Arab, Muslim, and diasporic identities are so often viewed in the West. Through interweaving of ancestral storytelling and modern psychological insight, Dr. Abdulrehman offers readers a rare window into a world where the unseen are not only acknowledged, but honoured.
– Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad, Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
Co-Editor of The International Handbook of Anti-Discriminatory Education (2025) and The Power of Oral Culture in Education: Theorizing Proverbs, Idioms, and Folklore Tales (2023)
In this masterpiece, Jinn in the Family, R.Y. Abdulrehman braids folklore that sings of ancestral wisdom, familial love and responsibility, and the rituals of food, song, and religion. He weaves the magic of food with such finesse that every spice—cardamom and cloves—feels like a prayer, pulling on the heart-and-soul strings of strangers without ever touching them. Throughout, there’s a constant tension between intuition and the obsession to explain it away using a language and a way of knowing completely unequipped to grasp the complexity of magic. This playful dance of cognitive dissonance—enchanting supernatural versus stubborn clinical—had my heart drumming. The seamless blend of ancestral wisdom and courage invites you to believe in yourself, in your own intuition, and in the rhythms of your own lineage.
– Somia Sadiq, Founder of Narratives and Kahanee, Author of Gajarah.
