Born in 1984, Ziyaad Ally is a self-defined child of the ’80s, a creator influenced by the books he read and the TV he watched in the ’80s and ’90s. “‘Lord of the Rings’ was a big influence. ‘X-Men’ was a big influence. ‘Mortal Kombat,’ any little thing I saw on TV,” Ally recounted. Now an IT consultant based in Durban, South Africa, Ally entered the world of fantasy authors when he published in April his first novel, “Myth Shadow: The Glowing Gate.” “Myth Shadow” is an action adventure story focusing on the journey of a young magic user named Cassandra. Alongside five others, she hones her skills at a school for the magic arts and must defeat forces of the dark. The Hawk sat down with Ally to talk to him about his novel, his identity and what inspires him.
Your pen name is Ziyaad Ally Khan. Who is he? Ziyaad Ally Khan is me. I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m an author. I’m a storyteller. At heart, I’ve always been, from as young as I can remember. I’ve been influenced by my upbringing, my parents, my grandparents, everyone I’ve met. I continue to be inspired day in, day out by the most mundane of things. I just enjoy telling stories and having people get excited and lost in an engaging world.
What is the origin of the name Khan? There’s a whole bunch of different things that went into motivating my pen name as Ziyaad Ally Khan. Number one: Iit makes for a cool logo. That’s Zak, Z. A. K. But most importantly, it’s a bit of a tribute to my grandmother [Rokhia Bee Bee Khan]. When I was very young, I was the bookworm, and I always wanted to find my time in the library and want to be whisked away. My grandmother was the one who took me and shaped me and carted me almost every weekend. Through her and through my granddad, they started my love for literature and reading and writing and history and art and all those good things.
You work in IT. How does that fit with your creative side? So my day job is IT consultant, [enterprise resource planning] consultant, systems analyst … It’s cool to be able to be part of that and solve some problems and make life easy for people. I like people, and I like it when people are able to solve their challenges. If I was a part of that, I’m happy.
What type of story is “Myth Shadow?” It’s an action adventure, mystery, drama. It’s got a bit of everything. Particularly it follows the journey of a bunch of young people. There’s a lead character, and there’s two close friends, and they meet another set of three. So, there’s six of them, which are the focal characters … they range in age from 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, like that. And the backdrop is action, adventure, mythology, drama, intrigue. But it’s still this coming-of-age story of these young people navigating the world and figuring out their place in it, and they’re gifted these exceptional powers and abilities.
What kind of powers? Some of them have super strength, and some of them have rock-like skin. Some of them can control fire and wind and water and just magical, magnificent stuff, all inspired by mythological heroes and mythological stories — Japanese, Greek, Norse. There’s Aztec myth in there. There’s some lesser-known Sumerian and Mesopotamian and Canaanite myth and stuff all rolled in. And there’s a story that sort of ties all of it together … It’s a fantastical engaging world where anything and everything can happen.
Why did you blend these various mythologies? My grandfather was a teacher of history and eventually became a high school principal, but history was always close to his heart. He had all these textbooks. I would read about Roman auxilia and the soldiers and the studio formation and how they would approach battle. And then I would read about Carthage and how they would approach manufacturing and putting together their armor. I played games like Age of Empires and Age of Mythology. I’ve always been a student of mythological history, of chronicles of storytelling. There’s these tales of Hercules and Japanese mythology and Sumerian myth. Those stories inspired me.
Did your identity as a Black South African play a role in shaping the characters in this novel? As an author, you’re cognizant about these things in terms of the identity, the racial identity, the sexual identity, the orientation of the characters and how they may be perceived by readers. When I thought about these things, I sat down, and then I realized the best thing to do is actually not think about these things because the stories and the characters write themselves … The truth is, if you want to be genuine to the story and the characters, you have to have each character navigate the world and tell the story in a context that’s genuine for that character.
You have spoken of your own spirituality, as a Sunni Muslim, and how it has impacted your worldview. Can you tell us about that? My spirituality, my reverence, my understanding and my appreciation for things that we can’t necessarily quantify with human words, the unseen bits and bobs, I think that affects me on a day-to-day basis. I wake up feeling happy and genuinely excited to tackle certain things.
Happiness, curiosity, adventure — they all seem to be part of your storytelling and your world view. The gift of life is the gift of awareness. All of these beautiful, majestic, wonderful structures, rivers and lakes, these are things of the natural world. But life brings awareness, and with the gift of life that we’ve been given, we can appreciate these things, whereas they would have otherwise just been there. And I wonder what else is just there that I haven’t yet seen and haven’t yet experienced. I’m thankful for the type of technology we have today because I’m able to see those things that are there that I can’t reach just yet, like the cherry blossoms of Japan, or the pyramids in Machu Picchu, or the great open sands of the of deserts in Egypt. All these things are there, just ripe for appreciation. Love to see them all one day, Philadelphia, too.
