The man from the mohalla

FICTION WRITING IN English is on an all-time high in the subcontinent. Last year, Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a haunting account of life during the civil war.

- FAIZAL KHAN

Another Sri Lankan, Anuk Arudpragasam, was on the shortlist for the Booker the year before with a stream of conscious monologue about, again the Lanka civil war, in A Passage North. Pakistani-origin British author Aamina Ahmad's first novel, The Return of Faraz Ali, is an addition to the powerful narratives of the social and political history of the subcontinent presented in English language literature.

Ahmad's first novel is set in Lahore, more specifically in Tibbi in the walled city. It begins in pre-Partition India in February 1943 as a boy is taken away from Tibbi's Shahi Mohalla, where he was born to a Kanjari single mother. Twenty-five years later, Faraz Ali, a policeman now, returns to the mohalla of his birth as a station house officer to bury the murder of a 12-year-old girl. It's Pakistan, ruled by General Ayub Khan, who has brought his country into the fold of America as its Cold War partner. But the city is witnessing demonstrations by the youth, who are inspired by politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The Return of Faraz Ali

Aamina Ahmad Westland Books Pp 371, 3799