A world-class tale of love and deceit, rivalry and destiny from the Lahore-based writer Uzma Aslam Khan.
'Standing in a room with eight thousand tiny creatures, witnessing them perform a dance that few humans even knew occurred; this was life. Everywhere she looked, each caterpillar nosed the air like a wand and out passed silk… When Dia watched one spin, she came closer to understanding the will of God than at any other time.'
Dia is the daughter of a silk farmer, Riffat – an innovative, decisive businesswoman. Like her mother, Dia seems at first sight unrestricted, spirited and resourceful. She seems free. But freedom has its own borders, patrolled by the covetous and the zealous, and there are those who yearn to jump the fence.
Daanish has come back to Karachi for his father’s funeral, all the way from America, a land where there are plenty of rules but few restrictions. When Dia and Daanish meet, they chafe against all the formalities. It is left to a handful of silkworms, slipped inside a friend’s dupatta, tickling skin, to rupture the fragile peace of both their houses – to make the space in which Dia and Daanish can create something together…

Trespassing

Literature & Fiction

Khan, Uzma Aslam

Literary

Harper-perennial

It is the careless abandon of a wine-satiated afternoon that first brings together the imperious Mrs. Masood and the humble carpenter's wife, Malika. As she observes the wealthy woman whose family is responsible for all her troubles, a plan takes shape in Malika's mind to recover the money Mrs. Masood owes her husband, and rescue her son from slow death in Mr. Masood's carpet factory. Unknown to both women, the moment marks the beginning of relationship that is to change their lives forever. Vividly narrated and full of funny yet complex dilemmas, this is a novel about the sweetness of life and about how we inexorably drive ourselves to our own doom. It marks the debut of a gifted storyteller from Pakistan.

The Story of Noble Rot

Penguin Group USA

Trespassing: A Novel

A dazzling first novel of two lovers' struggle for freedom and passion in a city riven by turmoil Back in Karachi for his father's funeral, Daanish, a Pakistani student changed by his years at an American university, is entranced by the gazelle-eyed girl in the traditional dupatta who appears one day at the house of mourning. But the dupatta is deceptive: Dia is the modern daughter of a mother who, as the owner of a silk farm and factory, has achieved a degree of freedom rare among Pakistani women. It will take a handful of silkworms, fattened on mulberry leaves, to bring Daanish and Dia together. But their union will forever rupture the peace of two households and three families, destroying a stable present built on the repression of a bloody past. In this sweeping novel of modern Pakistan, Uzma Aslam Khan takes us deep into a world of radical contrasts, from the stifling demands of tradition and family to the daily oppression of routine political violence, from the gorgeous sensual vistas of the silk farms to the teeming streets of Karachi-stinking, crumbling, and corrupt. At once delicate and passionate, Trespassing introduces a new and powerful voice from a land we know too little about.

Metropolitan Books

Thinner Than Skin is a riveting novel about identity and belonging. It’s also a love story: between a young Pakistani man trying to make his way as a photographer in America, and the daughter of a Pakistani father and German mother brought up in the U.S. who wants to return to a country she’s never seen. Together they make the trip to Pakistan, where a chance meeting with a young nomad changes their lives, and the lives of those around them, forever. The novel is also a love letter to the wilds of northern Pakistan, to glaciers, to the old Silk Road, and to the nomadic life of the indigenous people in the northern territories, where China encroaches and Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Russians, Chinese and Afghans come together to trade.

Thinner Than Skin: A Novel

HarperCollins, Publishers

Amal: the practical sister who digs up the "diamond key" that unlocks the mystery of Pakicetus, a whale-dog creature who once swam the ancient seas that are now Pakistan. Mehwish: the blind younger sister, who moves with the sun and music inside her and thinks in "cup lits not fully legal." Zahoor: their heretical grandfather, a scientist who loves variation and "vim zee" and his two granddaughters most of all. Noman: the young man who steps into a lecture hall, decides "their triangle needs a fourth point," and changes all their lives.These are the four shifting chambers who make the heart of The Geometry of God, the new novel from lauded Pakistani writer Uzma Aslam Khan. Through these vivid, contradictory, and original characters, Khan celebrates the complexities of familial and erotic love, the tug of curiosity and duty, the intersections of faith and longing. Her exuberant language draws from Urdu and Punjabi and invents one of its own for Mehwish, whose fractured English divides and slows and reveals. 
The Geometry of God is a novel one can read greedily, following these characters as their lives unfold against the backdrop of General Zia's Pakistan, where religious fundamentalism gains ground and the mujaheddin is funded by gem sales and the Americans. Or one can savor, as the sisters show us: digging as Amal does toward the novel's deepest questions about love and knowledge and faith, moving as Mehwish does to the rhythms of an abundant and original language.

Geometry of God

Contemporary

Clockroot Books

In the wilds of Northern Pakistan, where glaciers are born of mating ice, two young lovers shatter the tenuous peace of a nomadic community Thinner than Skin is a riveting novel about identity and belonging. It's also a love story: between a young Pakistani man trying to make his way as photographer in America, and the daughter of a Pakistani father and German mother brought up in the US, who wants to return to a country she's never seen. Together they make the trip to Pakistan, where a chance meeting with a young nomad changes their lives, and the lives of those around them, forever. The novel is also a love letter to the wilds of Northern Pakistan, to glaciers, to the old Silk Road, and to the nomadic life of the indigenous people in the Northern territories, where China encroaches and Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Russians, Chinese, and Afghans all come together to trade.

Thinner than Skin

United States

Review\nOne of the New York Times' Books for Summer 2022\n"A miraculous performance ... Khan's suspenseful, thought- provoking narrative is a challenge to simple assumptions about enemies and friends, loyalty and betrayal."--The New York Times\n"Deeply researched and beautifully written." —Kirkus Reviews\n"Khan engages readers with a confident style and seamless storytelling." —Publishers Weekly\n"As affecting as it is intellectually powerful, the novel is a master lesson in the art of historical fiction." —Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and Run and Hide\n"A richly imagined universe...The characters are vividly drawn, and their voices ring true ...Khan's prose slows the reader down to retrace and savour words ... If we are to strive for a more just world, we need to hear the stories." —The Hindu\n"Part of the beauty of Khan's writing stems from the fact that she does not need to actively portray racism, she makes virtually all her characters live it ... Khan writes with quietly restrained but powerful passion." —The Dawn, Pakistan\n"In the novel, the lives of these characters intersect and their destinies get intertwined. Khan is adept at creating worlds that are at once magical and terrifying. She creates a universe out of a footnote of history. Her writing is crystal, vivid." — Indian Express\n"Though the stories are based on true life incidents and characters, it is a work of fiction — fiction that will move you immensely. A consummate storyteller, Uzma keeps the readers engrossed till the end. Even as you grapple with the questions: where is humanity in such times and what is the definition of ethics and morals when survival is the moot point — it is one story that you should not miss." —The Tribune\n"A penal colony, a nameless woman prisoner, a world war, three children and a hen. From this miscellany is fashioned award-winning Pakistani author Uzma Aslam Khan's fifth book, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali... A burdened history, an emotionally charged story. Strength on strength. Hopelessness, sorrow but also courage. Above all, resilience. Though rigorously researched, the dry bones of historical facts never show through, so richly are they enfleshed with credible characters, lyrical descriptions of nature and a powerful narrative flow. This fiction is the new truth we need to know." —New Indian Express\n"In important ways, even more so than a good history book, it is good fiction that is truly capable of capturing not just what it is factually known to have transpired but also the attendant hopes, dreams, and emotions of a people and an era. Such a work of fiction miraculously lifts the mists of collective forgetfulness. The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali performs that vital and welcome miracle ... The voices of the past have been successfully captured and amplified by this remarkable novel ... (with a) dream-like quality to (the) beautiful prose. (It) is a novel about pain, loss and systematic exploitation but ultimately, it is also about injustice that transcends time and locale. And yet ... it does not obfuscate injustice as a neutral, ahistorical and decontextualized phenomenon. It provides no leeway for the unjust to breathe easy. In Khan's politics, the ingloriousness of empires, the tyranny of the oppressors and suffering of the victims are not abstract ideas. She engages with these ideas through specific stories with a definite history and a particular geography--a history and geography that keep repeating ... At the same time, all that in no way prevents her from also successfully exploring the universality of the phenomena. Therein lies the great success of the novel." —The Herald Pakistan & Scroll.in\n"A perfect work of historical fiction is one that is as compelling as it is enlightening. Uzma Aslam Khan's new novel The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is just that — a perfect balance of history and the imagination." —The Hindu Business Line\nSet in the Andaman Isla

The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

British & Irish

Deep Vellum Publishing

"Smart, fierce, and poignant: perhaps the most exciting novel yet by this very talented writer." Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist Young Pakistani photographer and his American born Pakistani-German lover travel from California to Pakistan in an attempt to exorcize their pasts, in order to build their shared future. Up in the glaciers of Northern Pakistan, a tragedy at a mountain lake entwines the fates of the two lovers with the people they encounter there: Miryam, a nomad, travelling with her family into the mountains to escape persecution, and Irfan, haunted by ghosts and hoping that the mountains may offer him a reprieve from his troubles. An expansive look at the intersection of cultures and what happens at those intersections, Thinner Than Skin is a powerful and moving read.

Thinner Than Skin

Parenting & Relationships

Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd

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Books by Khan, Uzma Aslam