Thanks to Write Reads for inviting me on the tour and thanks to Neem Tree Press for my gifted copy.
What is it about?
A witty and theatrical South Asian mystery novel set over the course of one single electrifying night, exploring the unfinished business death leaves in its wake.
Nazia Sami is a celebrated author, but perhaps her greatest plot twist is yet to be produced. In her final days, she wields a pen one last time as she fills her diary with instructions for her sister and writes six letters to be delivered after her death.
There is to be no funeral for Nazia. Instead, only six invitees are invited to a party, one of whom is a mystery guest. Over the course of an extraordinary evening, secrets are revealed, pasts reconsidered, and lives are forever changed.
Bobs and Books honest review:
This started off a bit slow and repetitive where the point that Nazia was having a party and not a funeral was really hammered into the reader.
That being said, what I found particularly striking and clever was how Nazia was still the main character of her own story despite being dead.
An interesting mix of ensemble characters that made for intriguing reading.
The ending did fall a bit flat for me.
About the author:
Taha Kehar is a novelist, journalist and literary critic. A law graduate from SOAS, London, Kehar is the author of three novels, No Funeral for Nazia (Neem Tree Press, 2023), Typically Tanya (HarperCollins India, 2018) and Of Rift and Rivalry (Palimpsest Publishers, 2014). He is the co-editor of The Stained-Glass Window: Stories of the Pandemic from Pakistan. Kehar has served as the head of The Express Tribune’s Peshawar city pages and bi-monthly books page, and worked as an assistant editor on the op-ed desk at The News. Kehar’s essays, reviews and commentaries have been published in The News on Sunday, The Hindu and South Asia magazine and his short fiction has appeared in the Delhi-based quarterly The Equator Line, the biannual journal Pakistani Literature and the OUP anthology I’ll Find My Way.
Out now
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