“The reason I wanted more is because of what Khan does well: offering a kaleidoscopic view of those so often rendered invisible.” “Charmingly modern language surrounds readers, soaking them in the culture of world while demonstrating the subtleties of an often-misrepresented Muslim society.” These and other stories link us into the complexities of a sometimes troubled and often misrepresented Muslim society. “The First” will astonish many readers by its depiction of sexual encounters of young college girls in Pakistan. “Born on the First of July” opens the door into the home of a Toronto girl who has left to join ISIS and the devastated family she leaves behind. “Things She Could Never Have” is a love story about two young trans women living in Karachi. In “To Allah We Pray,” two privileged and educated young men, one of them home from Toronto, gallivant through the streets of Karachi, finally walking into a doomed mosque. “Whisperings of the Devil” takes us into the mind of a mistreated maidservant’s boy who gets seduced into the role of a suicide bomber. Accomplished, sensitive, and often disturbing, these stories take us into the lives of modern Pakistanis–privileged and poor, gay, trans, and straight, men and women, in Karachi and Toronto.
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