“‘You brown girls are hard work,’ he told her, ‘but your smell alone is worth it,” Saima Mir writes in the first few pages of her book, leaving you triggered, at unease, with a parle of thoughts, imagination and a sense of being in the same room as the characters.
About the author
Saima Mir is a British Pakistani journalist who grew up in Bradford. She has written for The Times, the Guardian and Independent. Her essay for It's Not About The Burqa (Picador) appeared in the Guardian and received over 250,000 hits online in two days. Saima has also contributed to the anthology The Best, Most Awful Job: Twenty Mothers Talk Honestly About Motherhood. Saima lives in London.
Synopsis
‘Be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men.’ Jia Khan has always lived like this. A successful lawyer, her London life is a long way from the grubby Northern streets she knew as a child, where her father headed up the Pakistani community and ran the local organised crime syndicate. Often his Jirga rule – the old way – was violent and bloody, but it was always justice of a kind. But now her father, Akbar Khan, has been murdered and Jia must return to take his place. In the past, the police relied on him to maintain the fragile order of the streets. But a power struggle has broken out amongst the various communities and now, nobody is safe. Justice needs to be restored, and Jia is about to discover that justice always comes at a cost.
Why should you read it?
The Khan is an intense book, definitely relevant to the contemporary world where women still struggle to hold positions of power, combat racist and sexual attacks and climb the ladder while holding the front at home as conventional homemakers. Saima’s writing is impeccably visual and teleports you to the scene, the world, the time that she’s describing. As a reader, it’ll give you a sense of belonging, an unnerving yet photographic feel of standing in the street and watching the drama unfold, or being in a prayer room. Mir’s choice of vocabulary comes as a breather in times when every writing is a slave of English language. Mir breaks that glass ceiling and uses a bit of Urdu and Punjabi at some places to give you a sense of belonging, a sense of community. If you enjoy a good Agatha Christie thriller, you’ll enjoy Mir’s venture into the world of Jia Khan.
Published by One World Publications, the book is available on Amazon and Waterstones.
