Content warning: This section of the guide explores racism, enslavement, and misogyny. It also discusses murder and rape.

Nahri is the protagonist of the story. Because she lives in the human world for her first 20 years with no awareness of the magical world, she is the reader’s point of entry to the fictional world. She has striking black eyes, brown skin, long, curly black hair, and sharp features. In Cairo, where she grows up, her survival depends on her deception of others and her ability to steal. She has always had special healing and language abilities but only used them to aid her career in swindling men. She survives with no family and no knowledge of her background until she is around 20 years old. The skills that she develops in Cairo—deception, reading people, and healing—are the same skills that eventually lead her to success in Daevabad. Nahri has a strong sense of humor and a disregard for tradition—in Egypt, for example, she did not share the common comfort around the dead, and in Daevabad she eats meat and struggles to keep her fire lit.

Nahri has the unique opportunity to enter Daevabad and judge for herself what role she will play there.