NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NPR
"Stunning not only on account of the author's talent, of which there is
clearly plenty, but also in its humanity." **--**New York Times Book
Review (cover)
Sent back to his birthplace**--Lahore's notorious red-light
district--**to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an
unexpected reckoning with his past.
Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore's
walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of
courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was
abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at
the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at
a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar,
has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as 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 in a marginalized
community, 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?
