Not a Fairytale is a wonderful, unusual book set in an Indian Muslim community. This debut by Shaida Kazie Ali tells the story of two Cape Town sisters, interspersed with fairytales with a modern spin and even a recipe or two... Salena, the older sister, is light-skinned and demure, an easy one to marry off to a husband of her parents’ choosing. Zuhra is dark and wilful, refusing tradition and leaving the country in pursuit of her own destiny The shoots of their lives grow apart and interlace again. Salena finds herself in a repressive marriage much like her mother’s. Zuhra comes to suspect grim undercurrents to both their lives, which she expresses by retelling familiar fairytales, often hilariously, in a Muslim framework. But this is not a fairytale. The dark forest is real, and so are its secrets.