Trespassing - Hardcover

Khan, Uzma Aslam

3.43

558 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007152779 ISBN 13: 9780007152773

Publisher: Flamingo, 2003

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A world-class tale of love and deceit, rivalry and destiny in a truly masterful and thoroughly involving novel from the Lahore-based writer Uzma Aslam Khan.

‘Standing in a room with eight thousand tiny creatures, witnessing them perform a dance that few humans even knew occurred; this was life. Everywhere she looked, each caterpillar nosed the air like a wand and out passed silk...When Dia watched one spin, she came closer to understanding the will of God than at any other time.’

Dia is the daughter of a silk farmer, Riffat – an innovative, decisive businesswoman. Like her mother, Dia seems at first sight unrestricted, spirited and resourceful. She seems free. But freedom has its own borders, patrolled by the covetous and the zealous, and there are those who yearn to jump the fence.

Daanish has come back to Karachi for his father’s funeral, all the way from America, a land where there are plenty of rules but few restrictions. When Dia and Daanish meet, they chafe against all the formalities. It is left to a handful of silkworms, slipped inside a friend’s dupatta, tickling skin, to rupture the fragile peace of both their houses – to make the space in which Dia and Daanish can create something together...

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Review:

‘A story of cultural and ethnic conflict in spare and elegant prose that resonates beyond its immediate setting.’ Observer

‘A haunting and beautiful book.’ Glasgow Sunday Mail

‘Original and emotional...as intricately patterned and vivid as lengths of top-quality silk.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Cocoons are not the only things that explode in this novel. The silken prose emphasises the conflict between the tender subject and a world (in this case Pakistan) where violence of every sort has become institutionalised. It is a self-confident novel and marks the emergence of a new generation of Pakistani novelists unencumbered by the icons or the ideology of a wretched state.’ Tariq Ali

Synopsis:

a world-class tale of love and deceit, rivalry and destiny in a truly masterful and thoroughly involving novel from the Lahore-based writer Uzma Aslam Khan 'Daanish thought of the gazelle-eyed girl in the blue dupatta. If she returned, he wanted to be the first to talk to her. He wanted to tell her he'd followed her advice and found out what she'd left. He wanted also to look more closely at that smooth, caramel face with the gracefully tapering chin. But he'd not see her again. Did he even remember her correctly?' Daanish will remember her, the girl Dia. She is his future and his past. They come together by chance, he from far away over the ocean, from Amreeka, where there are plenty of rules but few restrictions. She is local, but of the new breed of women -- unrestricted, spirited and resourceful, just like her mother, the entrepreneur, the silk farmer. And it is a handful of silkworms, fattened on mulberry leaves, slipped inside a friend's dupatta, cocoons tickling skin, that, in rupturing the peace and plans of a household, make the space -- noisy like the sea in a shell - in which Dia and Daanish can create something anew, all over again.

Meanwhile, all around them new ways drive out old, as new hatreds are manufactured and old ones revived, and new rules are made and then broken. The architecture of this novel is intricately and delicately made, the characters -- and their destinies -- utterly clear before us and compelling; the collision between individuals and the societies that constrict and construct them can be felt on every page; and there is behind all a sense of doom, and of doom repeated, of black clouds promising dramatic storms, that drives the reader hurriedly through the book seeking shelter -- for the characters they come to love as much for themselves. It is a novel of our times for our times, and Flamingo feels confident that many readers will adore it.

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