Impunity

'A searing, immaculately written novel about family, power, accountability and the loss of innocence' LOUISE KENNEDY

'This is Shamsie's masterpiece' KIRAN DESAI


Nyla's family is powerful, admired, influential: the toast, in her eyes, of 1970s Karachi. The man responsible for their continued success is her revered Uncle, a man obsessed with order and art, status and politics. Then a girl appears in her garden — a girl very close to her age, with a name not unlike her own. This brief, thrilling encounter will fracture Nyla's understanding of the world her Uncle has painted, and set her on a dangerous path.


Over the next years, as she comes of age in a country tipping into political unrest, Nyla will realise that attempting to unpick the past, she is playing a dangerous game in the present — a game her Uncle has been playing for far longer than she has.


A gripping family drama, Impunity is a modern masterpiece, exploring the price of freedom in a family whose rotten roots run deep.