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Stories
by Kanza Javed
A haunting, powerful collection of stories spanning modern-day Pakistan and the diaspora in the US, from a sparkling new literary talent.
In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society. An addict teaches his young son to shoot feral dogs on the streets of Lahore. A Christian nurse gets drawn into a plan to trap the ghost of her patient's former lover. A Pakistani student in a small Appalachian town grapples with a startling act of violence that shatters her illusions of safety and freedom. A lonely wife becomes increasingly obsessed with a cloth worry doll left behind by a previous tenant.
Written with sharp insight and remarkable empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender, and religion as Javed deftly examines questions of identity and agency, belonging and loss. What Remains After a Fire is a moving portrayal of fiercely resilient characters who desire more than what their circumstances can offer them―and what these desires ultimately cost them.
"Skillfully drawn, often heartbreaking reckonings." —Kirkus Reviews
"Kanza Javed's What Remains After a Fire is a rare and wondrous debut. This is a collection where the dust and swirling clouds of an entire galaxy are distilled into the pages of short stories. Crafted and essential, these stories sing." ―Kali Fajardo-Anstine, bestselling author of Sabrina & Corina and Woman of Light
"Kanza Javed's What Remains After a Fire haunts in the best possible way, drawing us into the intimate conflicts, fleeting joys, and profound loneliness of the human experience with deft, beautiful prose. From Lahore to Maryland, the stories in this stunning debut demonstrate Javed's rare insight and talent." ―Uche Okonkwo, author of A Kind of Madness
This information about What Remains After a Fire was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kanza Javed is a Pakistani author with an MFA from West Virginia University, where she received the Rebecca Mason Perry Award. She is also the winner of the 2020 Reynolds Price Prize for Fiction. Her writing has been published in the American Literary Review, Punch Magazine, Salamander, and Greensboro Review, among other publications.
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