The Return of Faraz Ali
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE WRITERS' GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BOWKER VOLCANO AND MCKITTERICK PRIZES
'A stunning debut novel'
Kamila Shamsie
'An impressive, gripping debut'
The Times
'Rich and deeply moving . . . marvellous'
Yaa Gyasi
Pakistan, 1968. As riots erupt in the streets of Lahore, Inspector Faraz Ali returns to his birthplace, the red-light district in the walled inner city. Wrested from it as a child by his powerful father to be raised by a respectable family, Faraz has hidden his roots ever since. Now his father has sent him back: to cover up the murder of a young courtesan.
It should be a simple task, but for once Faraz finds himself unable to obey orders - nor can he resist searching for the mother and sister he left behind. Chasing after answers that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence, Faraz is unaware that his sister also faces a return to the old city, and to the life she
thought she had escaped.
'A gripping read that does not let you go, even after the end'
Maaza Mengiste
' Stunning . . . fully human, fully engaged with what makes us human'
New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Ahmad's simmering debut, a Lahore police officer investigates a young girl's death in the city's infamous red-light district in 1968. Faraz Ali is ordered by Wajid Sultan, the chief secretary of Punjab and Faraz's estranged father, to orchestrate a cover-up. To Faraz, the son of a kanjari, or prostitute, the assignment is an opportunity to reconnect with his mother and sister, Rozina, from whom Wajid had him removed as a child and sent to live with relatives. But after Faraz realizes the victim, Sonia, was a kanjari who was killed in the company of several influential men, his determination to seek justice for one of his own despite Wajid's order results in his exile from Lahore. The author does a good job interweaving the characters' personal drama with political unrest in Pakistan, but the constant switches in perspectives and time frames can feel jarring, and the truth behind Sonia's murder is only fleetingly hinted at. Ahmad shines the most in her piercing observations of the marginalized and oppressed: Rozina muses that loss is merely "the condition of a woman's life," while a Bengali officer resigns himself to dying in the fight for his people's independence. It is this keen eye for the vicissitudes of human life that, despite an uneven whole, demonstrates Ahmad's promise.
