SHORT FICTION

‘OUR OWN FANTASTIC’—Second prize winner Australian Book Review’s 2023 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Read it in ABR’s August 2023 print issue and listen to the podcast here.

‘THE ORIGIN OF SWEETNESS’—Read it in Desi Delicacies: Food Writing From Muslim South Asia, December 2020 in India and in Dastarkhwan, April 2021 in UK (print).

‘NOW PRAY: NOTES ON A SEPARATION’—Read it in AGNI 92, Fall 2020 (print).
Watch the Launch:  https://youtu.be/-3RD0qquqiA 

Read more about "Now Pray: Notes …" in an article by Claire Chambers on four women writers of color—myself, Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy, and Elif Shafak. Chambers: "Out of the four pieces ("Now Pray: Notes ... ") is the richest and most multidirectional discussion of the pandemic, lockdowns and reopen protestors ... This devastating, lyrical piece reflects on the many forms of lockdown that immigrants have experienced for years, and how this year's shelter-in-place orders further complicate that. The narrator uses the second person to write to her elder sister who ... underwent a mental health crisis that never lifted ... This is the finest writing on mental illness I've read for ages."

‘PLUM ISLAND’—Winner Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction competition 2019.
Pulitzer-prize finalist Tommy Orange judged, stating: “This story was far and away my favorite. The balance and pacing were perfect. The sentences were surprising and inventive. The narrative was full and complex. The ending was brilliant. I could read a whole novel of this character and setting.”

‘MY MOTHER IS A LUNAR CRATER’—Second prize winner Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction competition 2018.
National Book award winner Colum McCann judged, stating: “My Mother Is a Lunar Crater” is a classic story—beautifully crafted, smart, engaging, and shot through with depth and nuance. It does what the best stories do: it gives us imaginative access to a human moment, and a time that might otherwise pass us by.”

The story was also a runner up in Calyx’s 2018 Margarita Donnelly Prize, judged by Whiting award winner Molly Gloss

Read “My Mother is a Lunar Crater” online
Or in print in Calyx Vol. 31:3 Winter/Spring 2020 and Nimrod Vol. 62 No. 2 Spring/Summer 2019.

‘THE MISSING’—Read it in Tehelka’s special issue, “Original Fictions 3,” October 2011 (print).

‘ICE, MATING’—Read it in Granta 112 : Pakistan, October 2010 (online and print).

Listen to a live reading of “Ice, Mating” at the Modern Times Bookstore, LitQuake, LitCrawl, San Francisco

Read a review of the anthology in The New York Times

“Ice, Mating” appeared, slightly amended, in my novel Thinner Than Skin

NOVEL EXTRACTS

The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

OPENING CHAPTER—read it in LitHub April 26, 2022

‘LIFE AND LOVE UNDER A LOCKDOWN’—read it in Scroll.in April 2020

‘THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION OF THE ANDAMANS CHANGES LIVES IRREVOCABLY’—in Scroll.in May 2019

‘IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE WITH HISTORICAL FICTION’—read it in First Post May 2019

Thinner Than Skin

‘THE NEWS AT HIS BACK’—read it in The Massachusetts Review Vol 43, No. 3. October 2012 (online and print)

This extract was reprinted by MR in “And There Will Be Singing” in celebration of its 60th anniversary, Nov 2019 (print)

UNTITLED—extract of Thinner Than Skin. Read it in Belletrista, Issue 18

The Geometry of God

‘NOMAN’—read it in The South Asian Review Vol. 31, No. 3. 2010 (print)

Trespassing

‘LOOK BUT WITH LOVE’—read it in And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women Oct 2008 (print)