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.
