About the Book

A STUNNING DEBUT WOVEN AROUND CRIME, POLITICS, FAMILY TIES AND BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS.
Faraz Ali still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister in Shahi Mohalla—Lahore’s notorious red-light district—at the direction of his powerful father. Now his father, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back, installing him as the head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl.
It should be a simple assignment to carry out, but for the first time in his career, Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails him with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city’s labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets—his family’s and his own—that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence.
Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect and at what price?

About the Author

Aamina Ahmad, a gradute of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, The Southern Review, Ecotone, and elsewhere; she is also the author of a play, The Dishonoured. She lives in Berkeley, CA.