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Rat City by Laury Silvers: A Reading and Discussion of a forthcoming noir detective novella set in an alternative-history medieval Muslim world. 

Rat City

The year is 986H/1578CE and Derya Mack lives and works in Aman-Kala, a plague fortress located between Arab, Persian, and Turkic lands. The Zanj have toppled the Abbasid Caliphate, outlawed slavery, and turned regions and cities into client states. The Zanj Caliphate governs from Baghdad backed up by the force of their empire-wide army. Regional militaries are outlawed and cities are left to govern themselves without police or jails. In Aman-Kala, private detectives solve crimes, large and small. Derya Mack is one of those detectives.

Laury Silvers is a North American Muslim, raised in the United States but finally at home in Canada. Her research and publications as a historian of religion focused on early Islam, early Sufism, and early pious and Sufi women. She taught at Skidmore College and the University of Toronto. Silvers also published work engaging Islam and Gender in North America in academic journals and popular venues, was actively involved in the woman-led prayer movement, and co-founded the . She has since retired from academia and activism and hopes her novels continue her scholarship and activism in their own way. She lives in Toronto under Treaty 13.