2023 McKitterick Prize (shortlist)
A charged, hypnotic debut novel about a boy’s life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story of fathers, sons, and the consequences of desire.
At age sixteen, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family’s feudal estate in upcountry, Pakistan. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive.
Instead, over the course of one hot, indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants: the people, who revere and revile his father in turn; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and most of all, Ali, who threatens to unearth all that is hidden.
Decades later, Fahad is living abroad when he receives a call from his mother summoning him home. His return will force him to face the past. Taymour Soomro’s Other Names for Love is a tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country’s troubled history, told with uncommon urgency and beauty.
Genre: Literary Fiction
At age sixteen, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family’s feudal estate in upcountry, Pakistan. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive.
Instead, over the course of one hot, indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants: the people, who revere and revile his father in turn; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and most of all, Ali, who threatens to unearth all that is hidden.
Decades later, Fahad is living abroad when he receives a call from his mother summoning him home. His return will force him to face the past. Taymour Soomro’s Other Names for Love is a tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country’s troubled history, told with uncommon urgency and beauty.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"This haunted, haunting novel is about the cruelties we commit in our search for freedom and the bonds from which we can never be free. Taymour Soomro's piercing insight is that both the freedom and the bonds are constituent of love." - Garth Greenwell
"A beautiful novel on the desire to leave and the hope to remain, the need to find oneself among one's people and away from them." - Hisham Matar
"An exceptional novel about fathers and sons, desire and love, and the long reach of the past." - Sunjeev Sahota
"Such a deftly told and evocative story of duty, masculinity and desire." - Kamila Shamsie
"A twenty-first century variation of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons... Taymour Soomro is a thrilling new addition to international literature." - Yiyun Li
"A beautiful novel on the desire to leave and the hope to remain, the need to find oneself among one's people and away from them." - Hisham Matar
"An exceptional novel about fathers and sons, desire and love, and the long reach of the past." - Sunjeev Sahota
"Such a deftly told and evocative story of duty, masculinity and desire." - Kamila Shamsie
"A twenty-first century variation of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons... Taymour Soomro is a thrilling new addition to international literature." - Yiyun Li
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Used availability for Taymour Soomro's Other Names for Love