NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NPRStunning not only on account of the
author’s talent of which there is clearly plenty but also in its humanity.” —New York Times
Book Review (cover)Sent back to his birthplace—Lahore’s notorious red-light district—to hush up
the murder of a girl a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past.Not since
childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla in Lahore’s walled inner city where women
continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the
day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there at the direction
of his powerful father who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid once
more dictating his fate from afar has sent Faraz back to Lahore installing him as head of the
Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a
young girl.It should be a simple assignment to carry out in a marginalized community but for
the first time in his career Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails
him with a jumble of memories he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled
city’s labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets—his family’s and his own—that risk shattering
his precariously constructed existence.Profoundly intimate and propulsive The Return of Faraz
Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose
to protect and at what price?
