Where the Light Falls

Author(s): Awais Khan

Location(s): Karachi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Contemporary

Nineteen-year-old Sakina lives in a remote village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where tradition governs every part of a woman’s life. Marriage, motherhood, obedience – these are the duties expected of her. But Sakina is bright, restless and in love, and the more she begins to question the rules of her world, the more dangerous that world becomes.

In Karachi, Amina appears to have everything Sakina does not: education, wealth, freedom, a voice. As a journalist, she is determined to expose injustice; as a daughter, she is expected to marry well, behave properly and forget the man she once loved. But privilege offers no protection from the judgements that follow women everywhere.

When their lives collide, Sakina and Amina are forced to confront the choices made for them, the men who seek to control them, and the price of refusing to disappear.

Moving between a rural village on the edge of change and the glittering, restless streets of Karachi, Where the Light Falls is a beautifully written, deeply moving novel about love, courage and resistance, and two women who must risk everything to be free.

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