Her hometown only contained one library, and readers could only borrow two books at a time, so Azad and her friends often made up stories for entertainment.
[2] Additionally, she cites S.A. Chakraborty's novel The City of Brass and Franny Billingsley's Chime as influences on the plot and writing style of The Candle and the Flame.
Its plot follows a young woman named Fatima, who is one of the sole survivors of a massacre that wiped out the city's original population, and who becomes entangled in the conflict between its human inhabitants, the Ifrit (a class of Djinn) and evil spirits known as the Shayateen.
[11] Booklist's Author Rena Barron noted the novel's 'lush, elaborate world-building', stating that it was 'a must-read for people who love fantasy brimming with beautiful writing and mythology'; it was also praised by other authors of Young Adult and genre fiction including Rachel Hartman, Rebecca Lim and Ausma Zehanat Khan.
[12] The rights to Azad's second young adult novel, The Wild Ones: A Broken Anthem for a Girl Nation, were acquired by Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster's Children's Division, in March 2020.