The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Set in the Andaman Islands over the course of oppressive imperial regimes, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is a complex, gripping homage to those omitted from the collective memory.
Nomi and Zee are Local Borns—their father a convict condemned by the British to the Andaman Islands, their mother shipped off with him. The islands are an inhospitable place, despite their surreal beauty. In this unreliable world, the children have their friend Aye, the pet hen Priya and the distracted love of their parents to shore them up from one day to the next. Meanwhile, within the walls of the prison, Prisoner 218 D wages a war on her jailers with only her body and her memory.
When war descends upon this overlooked outpost of Empire, the British are forced out and the Japanese move in. Soon the first shot is fired and Zee is forced to flee, leaving Nomi and the other islanders to contend with a new malice. The islands—and the seas surrounding them—become a battlefield, resulting in tragedy for some and a brittle kind of freedom for others, who find themselves increasingly entangled in a mesh of alliances and betrayals.
Ambitiously imagined and hauntingly alive, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali writes into being the interwoven stories of people caught in the vortex of history, powerless yet with powers of their own: of bravery and wonder, empathy and endurance. Uzma Aslam Khan’s extraordinary new novel is an unflinching and lyrical page-turner, an epic telling of a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the subcontinent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Khan (Thinner than Skin) draws on the history of a British prison colony on the Andaman Islands in this carefully plotted examination of power and oppression. The story opens on the morning Japanese soldiers arrive on the archipelago in 1942 and oscillates throughout the better part of 11 years, from 1936, when a political prisoner known only as 218 D (D for dangerous) is brought to the island, to 1947, when Britain's rule in India ends. At the core are four vividly drawn characters; along with 218 D, there are siblings Zee and Nomi and their friend Aye, all "Local Borns." In Khan's intricately intertwined narrative, the characters experience the brutalizing rule of the various occupiers. Upon embarrassing a Japanese soldier during an incident on the street involving a chicken, Zee must flee or suffer dire consequences. 218 D joins a hunger strike in the prison, where Aye witnesses horrible atrocities while working for the jail's superintendent. Nomi is swept up in the drama, and Khan unfolds her story of survival, which bears out to be miraculous indeed. Khan engages readers with a confident style and seamless storytelling.
