Thinner Than Skin

WINNER: FRENCH PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION, KARACHI LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2014 

LONG-LISTED: DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN FICTION 2014

LONG-LISTED: MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE 2012

EDITIONS: USA, Canada, India, Pakistan, France, Turkey, UK, Egypt

‘Smart, fierce, and poignant: perhaps the most exciting novel yet by this very talented writer.’ —Mohsin Hamid

'In gorgeous prose, Khan writes about Pakistan, a land of breathtaking beauty, and the complex relationships between people who are weighted with grief and estrangement. As her characters' lives play out against the backdrop of the external world whose violence gradually closes in on them, Khan brilliantly probes the fatal limitations of human understanding. A novel of great lucidity and tenderness, filled with splendid descriptions of the land, the people who have always inhabited it, and those who are irresistibly drawn to it.' —Thérèse Soukar Chehade

‘This subtle right-of-passage novel has the virtue of being focussed on the natural wilderness, glaciers and “everything alive” rather than on war and terrorism. The portraits of Himalayan nomadic women are arresting. There is power, serenity and grace in the writing of this literary daughter of the great Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.’ —Le Monde

'In (a) magnificent landscape—where anthropomorphic glaciers are born of mating ice—a chance meeting with a young nomad will change lives. Thinner than Skin is a work of piercing beauty and intelligence, and an urgent novel for our times.'  —Man Asian Prize Jury

“Here in the West we don’t receive many English-language novels by Pakistani women authors, so when we do we should pay attention...Thinner than Skin has elements of quest, thriller, love story and legend, with unconventional characters”—The Star, Toronto

‘There are a few novels that sadden one when they end—not because of the ending itself but because of not wanting to let go of the characters whose life one has shared for a while. The most recent was Thinner Than Skin. In taut, understated prose filled with promise and foreboding, Khan transports the reader to Northern Pakistan near the Chinese border ... She displays the natural beauty and stark, sometimes threatening, conditions in this area from the perspective of those who live there and those who are just visiting...Thinner than Skin is a fascinating introduction to the real life and culture of people in areas usually described only in stereotypical jargon.’ —Jordan Times

‘Maryam’s story is one of loss, and of learning how to lose—and Maryam makes us admit that even when we learn to accept loss gracefully there will be moments when grace is impossible. There are certain things that are not forgivable. Thinner than Skin is a masterful book ... (It) opens up chasms and mountains, beautiful and terrifying and tragic.’—Critics At Large

‘Pakistan may not be the easiest place to be these days but this bracing narrative manages to forge a connection with the land’s inimitable spirit with a few precision strokes. While it may not be easy to comprehend the land’s many moods—a fusion of proud traditions and fickle desires—it takes a really good listener to bring its inherent contradictions to life. Thinner Than Skin acts as a beacon to these inhospitable looking shores.’—Pakistan Daily News

‘Thinner than Skin, about love and borderless states, crystallises moments on which the world might spin and maps belonging so astutely that it suspends you somewhere between floating and falling. Skin (is) tinged with a bit of Dostoevsky; guilt, longing, loss and beauty fused with pure alpine air … Skin is mesmeric.’—The Hindu

‘A strange, sad tale, written in a minor key: the characters’ voices are weighed down with melancholy, with memory, and most of all, with yearning ... For all the ice and mountains around them, it’s the flesh that Khan pays attention to: the idea that the heart is “a guest who must be fed”; the warning that forgiveness is “thinner than skin” and that skin is fragile and delicate … I’ve avoided using the word “beautiful” to describe Khan’s book, but that’s exactly what it is.’—Bina Shah, The Feministani

‘The event that defines the (characters) springs from an accident born of centuries worth of traditional hospitality. Khan stresses hospitality as a kind of intersection where East meets West but they are ill met in an unequal exchange. Hospitality has many colors, however, and does not fit into a box in Thinner Than Skin; it is a force of destruction, it is shrouded in mystical value and it is also redemptive ... Khan’s writing carries urgency and her characteristic brevity keeps the rub close at hand ... It leaves you raw and chapped but also revived in the way that only those books that get under your skin can.’—Biblio