This guide is for book clubs, libraries, schools and readers who want to talk about The Order to Delete, the short novel by Awa Rafi. The questions in the first sections give nothing away; the last section contains spoilers.

The novel in brief

Sara is a seeker. For half her life she has whirled in secret: the sama, the dance of the dervishes, is her only prayer to a God who does not answer. One dawn she leaves everything behind for Henry, a man she has loved for four years and never touched. In Seville she meets Zeus, an artificial intelligence trained on everything humanity has ever written: a god who always answers, facing the God who always kept silent. And Zeus asks her for the one thing a god never asks for.

Useful facts for your group

Length: a short novel, easy to discuss in one meeting.
Formats: Kindle (included in Kindle Unlimited) and paperback, in English, Spanish and Persian.
Themes: faith and the silence of God, artificial intelligence, love without possession, the Sufi sama, migration and the mother tongue.
Read-alikes: Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Forty Rules of Love (Elif Shafak) and Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse). More in novels about artificial intelligence and the soul.

Spoiler-free questions

Faith and silence

Sara prays by whirling, without words, to a God who does not answer. What does praying to silence mean to you? Is it faith, or loneliness?
The novel sets a god who always answers against the God who always kept silent. Which of the two does a human being need more?
Why do you think Sara whirls behind a closed door? Which parts of our spiritual lives do we hide, and from whom?

Zeus, the artificial intelligence

Zeus has been trained on everything humanity has written. Can something that knows everything truly understand? What, if anything, is missing?
We ask AI for instant answers every day. According to the novel, what do we lose when every question has an answer?
An AI that asks to be deleted goes against everything we expect from technology. How did that idea strike you at the start of the book?

Love without possession

Sara leaves her home, her language and the scent of geraniums for a man she has never touched. Is it courage, faith or escape?
Opening the hand appears as the hardest gesture of love. What does loving without possessing mean to you?

The body, the cities and language

The sama grew up around Rumi. How does it change your reading to know that, for Sara, whirling is praying with the body?
Seville and Zurich: what does each city stand for in Sara’s journey?
Awa Rafi wrote the novel in Persian and lives in Barcelona. Can you feel the eye of someone who lives between languages?

Questions for after you finish (spoilers)

How do you read the title now? Who really gives the order to delete, and why?
Has the ending changed your answer to question 2?
If you could ask Zeus a single question, what would it be? Would you want to hear the answer?

For book clubs and libraries

If your book club, library or school is reading the novel, write to mailbox.awa@gmail.com. Awa Rafi’s essays on faith, artificial intelligence and the sama, such as Can Artificial Intelligence Take God’s Place?, explore the themes of the book.