As we approach the holiday period; a time when people are more likely to read as they escape their daily routine and work schedule we at Nasher have gathered some of the most talked about books this summer.
‘This Time Tomorrow’ by Emma Straub
Bestselling author Emma Straub—who also happens to be the daughter of the late bestselling author David Straub—has said that This Time Tomorrow is the closest thing to an autobiographical book she’s written. The story itself centers on Alice as she approaches her 40th birthday. She’s content with the life she’s built…even if it looks different from what she once imagined. But when she wakes up on her 16th birthday in 1996, she’s given a chance to relive the past, including precious time with her father before illness changed everything. Now, Alice must decide whether revisiting the past is enough or if she’s willing to change the future.
‘Good People’ by Patmeena Sabit
From the outside looking in, the Sharaf family captures the American dream. Once refugees with nothing, they’ve built a life of wealth and success in an elite neighborhood—and their smart daughter, Zorah, is the pride of the family. But when an unthinkable tragedy shatters their world, rumors swirl about what life behind closed doors was like. Told from multiple perspectives, Good People explores the complicated bonds of family and the eternal question: How well do we really ever know our loved ones?
‘Sorrow and Bliss’ by Meg Mason
The story follows Martha, who has always known something inside her isn’t right, but she quite can’t name it. Her husband Patrick tries to support her, but as their marriage begins to unravel, Martha is forced to confront what she truly wants from life.
‘Mothers and Sons’ by Adam Haslett
Forty-year-old New York asylum lawyer Peter has built a life around helping others while keeping his own painful past at a distance. But when a young gay asylum seeker’s case stirs old memories, Peter is forced to confront a long-buried secret and reconnect with his estranged mother.
Uprising by Tahmima Anam
Uprising, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is an unflinching feminist novel by Bangladesh-born British writer and anthropologist Tahmima Anam, set against the backdrop of the climate crisis, with a plot that turns on itself in ways you don’t expect. The story was inspired by a real-life brothel in Bangladesh, where sex work is legal.
When Kusum Khan attends anti-corruption demonstrations in Dhaka, “she had not been born until that very moment”. Yet her future is stolen shortly after, when her sister Pyara, just 18 months older, is shot dead at one such protest. Broken by grief and with no other options, Kusum accepts an offer to work abroad, but instead is trafficked to a brothel on a remote island, presided over by a cruel madam who was once sold into sexual slavery.
When Kusum leads the sex workers in a plot to overthrow their captor and support themselves by selling explicit photographs online, the author asks whether that autonomy is freedom, or a better bargain within a society that exploits women and workers. The characters Anam draws richly capture the moral complexities around sex work.
Turbulence by Hafsa Lodi
At the heart of Turbulence, journalist Hafsa Lodi’s thoughtful debut novel, is an uncomfortable question: are you still a feminist if you find yourself living the gender roles you once rejected?
Dunya Dawood is on a flight to New York from an unnamed Middle Eastern city. After a surprise upgrade to first class, she is temporarily separated from her toddler and her husband. It is the first time in a while that she’s had the space to think properly about her life, and, at 36,000ft in the air, she begins to question whether the path of domesticity she is on is what she truly wants.
In her past life, Dunya was a university student in New York who found her calling in Islamic feminism. She had also been serious about becoming a documentary filmmaker, but when her husband took over his father’s luxury travel company, she decided to give up her ambitions for love and move to the other side of the world with him.
Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam
Wimmy Road Boyz is an exhilarating debut novel set over one night on Wilmslow Road in Manchester, the city’s famous curry mile. A British-Pakistani trio of college friends are out on the town, driving through their city in a rented white BMW, but beneath the bravado is a deep denial of their realities. The main question is, will their friendship survive this night?
This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Daniyal Mueenuddin’s long-awaited debut novel (also shortlisted for the Orwell prize for political fiction), published 17 years after his acclaimed short-story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, is a panoramic depiction of Pakistan’s landed elite and the people in their orbit. The author’s expansive storytelling spans interlinked novellas over many decades, tracing the lives of several characters and their shifting relationships to wealth and power.
The book opens with Yazid, an orphaned boy raised by a tea-stall owner, whose charm and intelligence earn him respect wherever he goes. When a wealthy friend’s housemaid reminds him sharply of his place, he leaves in search of new opportunities, eventually finding his way to the household of Colonel Atar, a powerful industrialist and landowner. We move on to Rustom, the colonel’s nephew, who returns from his US education full of liberal ideals that dissolve on contact with the harsh realities of corrupt rural Pakistan. Then comes the story of Hisham, Rustom’s cousin, and finally, Saquib, a gardener’s son and Yazid’s protege.
At Sea by Y M Abdel-Magied
Sudanese-Australian writer, award-winning social advocate and “recovering mechanical engineer”, Yassmin Abdel-Magied drops Zainab, an expert driller, onto the rig for a high-stakes assignment, then makes the crew’s hyper-masculine culture drive the plot.
When Zainab takes charge of the operation, it is a significant step up for her career, especially as a Muslim woman navigating a male-dominated field. But as soon as she sets foot on the oil rig in the Pacific Ocean, she can sense that something is about to go terribly wrong. What begins as a journey to prove herself becomes a desperate fight to fix everyone else’s mistakes. Worst of all, a culture of dismissiveness towards safety has taken root at the top.
