Other Names for Love
‘Exceptional’ Sunjeev Sahota
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
On the train from Karachi, as dusk begins to fall, Fahad's dreams of his summer in London are fading. He is headed to Abad, the family's feudal estate, where his father intends to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family -- to make him a man.
Instead, over the course of one shimmering, indolent season, Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and by the people he meets: those who revere and revile his father; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and Ali, a teenager like him, whose presence threatens to unearth all that is hidden.
Other Names for Love is a truly exceptional novel: a luminous tale of memory and desire, inheritance and love, and the search for a sense of home. Written with urgency and unusual beauty, it marks the arrival of a stunning new voice in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Soomro's nuanced debut contends with themes of sexuality and masculinity in Pakistan. Fahad, 16, reluctantly travels by train with his father, Rafik, to their rural estate in Abad. Rafik hopes to introduce the theater-inclined Fahad to an appropriate friend who can help him become "a man." Ali, a tough, local boy, initially intimidates Fahad, but soon captures his heart, the heat and wildness of the countryside mirroring Fahad's desire. In chapters from Rafik's points of view, Soomro delves into his struggle to cultivate his jungle property into farmland and his ruthless determination to maintain power by bribing officials and coercing his workers into building an audacious dam. Decades later, in what seems to be the present day, Fahad is a successful writer living an openly gay life in London when his comfortable existence is upended by a call from his mother claiming his parents are about to lose their house in Karachi. Fahad returns to Pakistan and discovers Rafik has squandered his money and is losing his memory. Together they travel back to Abad, and Fahad, brimming with nostalgia for Ali, reckons with the passage of time. In sharp prose, Soomro brings clarity and emotional heft to Fahad's wistfulness ("the Ali he was looking for was long gone... but still he kept looking"). This author is one to watch.
