The Runaways
The new ‘bold and probing novel’ you won’t be able to stop talking about
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
This compelling, breath-taking read for fans of AMERICAN DIRT will make you question everything you thought you knew
One of the 'most important and prescient' books - Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes, The High Low
'Bhutto's new novel will move you' - Elif Shafak
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On the cusp of adulthood, three young people are about to make the most momentous decision of their lives.
Anita lives in Karachi's slums - fearful that her fate is to serve the rich, until an elderly neighbour offers her an escape into another world . . .
Monty belongs to Karachi's elite - his future is mapped out, until he meets a beautiful, rebellious girl . . .
Sunny is a Portsmouth teenager - he is suffocated by the love and expectation of his father, until his charismatic cousin shows him a way to be his own man . . .
These three paths are about to collide.
And when they do, Anita, Monty and Sunny will find themselves at the mercy of powers beyond their control, and faced with a choice that will change them forever.
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'This is a bold and probing novel from a writer strikingly alert to something small and true' Guardian
'Bhutto's new novel will move you its profound wisdom and sharp grasp of our turbulent times' Elif Shafak
'A shocking, moving, and deeply compassionate novel' Vogue
'Every page of this is priceless' Gary Shteyngart
'Stunning' Sunday Times
'Highly topical . . . The Runaways offers an unflinching look at the key subjects of our time' Financial Times
'A timely read that does a brilliant job of depicting the human cost when violence shifts from abstraction to reality'Mail on Sunday
'An illuminating guide through the great disorder of our times' Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
'Powerful and moving ... A book that anyone rushing to condemn young people for being radicalised should read' Anne Youngson, author of Meet Me at the Museum
'Provocative and resolutely compassionate' Traveller
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bhutto (The Shadow of the Crescent Moon) tells the wrenching story of three young people brought together in a jihadist training camp run in Iraq. Anita Rose Joseph, 16, grows up poor in Karachi and yearns for the kind of life enjoyed by her better-off schoolmates. After a neighbor introduces her to political radicalism via Urdru poetry, she is eager to learn more. Meanwhile, Sunny Jamil, 19, grows up in Portsmouth, England, a motherless child of Pakistani immigrants. Unsure about his sexuality and not fitting in with the other immigrant families or the English around him, he is lured out of isolation by jihadi radicalization. Monty Ahmed, 17, comes from a wealthy family Pakistani family and is relatively happy. After his girlfriend, Layla, disappears from Karachi, he follows her footsteps to Mosul, where new recruits are lured by her calls to arms via LiveLeak. Told in alternate chapters from the points of view of all three protagonists, the book moves forward and backward, explaining their motivations in spare, almost jaunty prose that elicits empathy for the troubled teens and stands in stark contrast to the seriousness of the plot. Bhutto's penetrating character study convinces all the way to the inevitable bloody end.
