Synopsis‘You see, Sara, it had to happen … I couldn’t have prevented it, could I? It could have been anyone, and it was me. It had to happen to someone, and it was me. Think about it. Of all the men in the world, of all the doctors in the world, of all the fathers in the whole world, I happened to be the one present in that place at that time. Someone or the other had to do it. It just so happens that that someone was your dad.’
Where does one draw the line between empathy and sacrifice? Between integrity and survival? Between the need to rise and the will to stay?
In an unnamed city in the Middle East, where the state punishes transgressions with amputations and public floggings, a young Indian doctor arrives to make his home and career. It isn’t long before money and success find him, but the price is steep and often unbearable, especially to those who must watch him walk the path of ambition and twisted dreams.
A powerful novel about the corrosive nature of complicity.
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Binding: HardBack
About the author
Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Kashmir. His debut novel, The Collaborator, was an international bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Shakti Bhatt Prize, and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. It was also the Book of the Year for Telegraph, New Statesman, Financial Times, Business Standard and the Telegraph (India), among others. His latest novel, The Book of Gold Leaves, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, and longlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize and the 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Waheed has written for the BBC, the Guardian, Granta, Guernica, Al Jazeera English and the New York Times. He lives in London.
