Nineteen years after his father's murder, Haroon Rizwan returns to the country of his birth to revisit his family home. Haunted alternately by nightmare visions of his father's death and the frustrating inability to remember exactly what happened, Haroon decides to search deeper within himself for answers. The visions take him back to that fateful year, 1983, and to Abdul, the Rizwans' servant boy. As Haroon relives his childhood one troubled by his father's abusive behaviour towards his mother he comes to realize that Abdul's past, with its undertones of violence, counterpoints his own.Without Dreams is the story of two boys growing up in a household beset by violence in a country sharply divided along ethnic and class lines. Like estranged brothers, Haroon and Abdul travel towards a common destiny, till a terrifying moment changes their lives for ever.
About the Author
Shahbano Bilgrami, born in Islamabad, Pakistan, moved to Canada along with her family when she was three years old. She spent her early childhood and adolescence in Montreal, moving back to Pakistan with her family in 1991. She completed her BA (Hons) in English from the University of London in 1997, followed by her MA in Twentieth Century Literature at Kings College London in 1998. She spent almost a decade at the Oxford University Press, Karachi, as educational editor. In 1997, her poetry was included in "An Anthology", a collection of work by new Pakistani poets published by the Oxford University Press. In 2003, she moved to the United States, where she began working on her first novel, "Without Dreams". "Without Dreams" was published in November 2007 by HarperCollins. It was long listed for the Inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize 2007. In the winter of 2008, Shahbano attended the Jaipur Literature Festival as part of a panel on Pakistani writing in English. In addition to writing fiction, Shahbano has reviewed books for a number of print and online publications. She is currently working on her second novel. |
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