The Haunting of Tram Car 015

P. Djèlí Clark

Feb 2019 · Sold by Tordotcom

About this ebook

P. Djèlí Clark returns to the historical fantasy universe of "A Dead Djinn in Cairo", with the otherworldly adventure novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015.

Finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award
Finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award
Finalist for the 2020 Locus Award

Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities — handling a possessed tram car.

Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons in a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

A wonderful, atmospheric novella set in an alternate Cairo, featuring haunted steampunk technology. I already knew I liked P. Djèlí Clark's writing because of The Black God's Drums and A Dead Djinn In Cairo, but I was still surprised by how much I liked The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - there are so many interesting concepts in here, all of them handled gracefully in so little space. I loved the worldbuilding. You can see how much thought and research went into it - this is set in an alt-history version of Cairo in which colonialism ended also because of the supernatural, in which airships and djinn-powered aerial tram cars are the most common means of transportation. I always love reading about worlds in which the technology is tied to the magic system (and, in this case, also to folklore and mythology), and this was no exception. This book also portrays Cairo as a diverse city, not only because humans live side-by-side with djinns, but because its population is all but homogeneous: there are Sufis, Copts, Armenians, Sudanese, people who grew up in the city and people who grew up in the countryside. P. Djèlí Clark's Cairo feels so alive. Even though the two main characters are men - two agents from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, one of which is a new recruit - this is a story in which women have a very important role. The Haunting of Tram Car's main plotline is about a mysterious being who is haunting a tram car and the attempted exorcisms, but that's not the only thing going on - in the background, we see side and minor female characters collaborating to get women the right to vote in Egypt. And the way that plotline ends? So many feelings. This novella approaches a lot of interesting themes - the way folklore is often steeped in misogyny; what gender could mean to non-human beings (featuring a genderfluid djinn!); the meaning of personhood and sentience; what "modernization" looks like when there's magic around - and maybe it didn't give that much space to them, but I never felt like any part of it was incomplete. I just want more books set in this world.

Awesome setting in an alternate history Egypt, with gods and women's lib as the backdrop. I love P. Djèlí Clark's writing and settings. Recommend all of his books which decolonise steampunk and historical fantasy. This is a fun romp, with engaging main characters. It's a short, gripping read.

This book was amazing! Though short, it packed a punch!

About the author

Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. Djèlí Clark spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. He is the author of the novel A Master of Djinn and the novellas The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. He has won the Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards and been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Awards. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Apex, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies, including Griots, Hidden Youth, and Clockwork Cairo. He is also a founding member of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons.