We Hunt the Flame

We Hunt the Flame is a fantasy novel by the American writer Hafsah Faizal, published in 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It is the first book of the Sands of Arawiya duology, followed by We Free the Stars.

The setting is inspired by ancient Arabia, and it is a country whose magic has been taken away: the Arz forest is cursed, the people in the villages are hungry, and the five kingdoms that were once one are waiting for a lost artefact. Zafira disguises herself as a man to hunt in the forest and feed the people who depend on her, and Nasir is the assassin who does his father's killing and despises himself for it. The two are sent to the same island on the same errand by the same sultan, each without knowing what the other is, and the novel follows the company they gather as much as the two of them. Faizal wrote several drafts before this one, and the book was her first published novel.

The duology was followed by other books from the same author, and the story is told with the chapters alternating between the two central characters.