Other Names for Love by Taymour Soomro

Gay's The Word Best Books of 2022
 
A hypnotic debut novel about a boy's life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story of fathers, sons, and the consequences of desire. On the train from Karachi, as dusk begins to fall, Fahad's dreams of his summer in London are fading. He is headed to Abad, the family's feudal estate, where his father intends to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family -- to make him a man.

Instead, over the course of one shimmering, indolent season, Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and by the people he meets: those who revere and revile his father; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and Ali, a teenager like him, whose presence threatens to unearth all that is hidden. Other Names for Love is a truly exceptional novel: a luminous tale of memory and desire, inheritance and love, and the search for a sense of home. Written with urgency and unusual beauty, it marks the arrival of a stunning new voice in fiction.
 
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'A beautiful novel on the desire to leave and the hope to remain, the need to find oneself among one's people and away from them' -- HISHAM MATAR, author of The Return

'An exceptional novel about fathers and sons, desire and love, and the long reach of the past '-- SUNJEEV SAHOTA, author of China Room

'Such a deftly told and evocative story of duty, masculinity and desire' -- KAMILA SHAMSIE, author of Home Fire

'This haunted, haunting novel is about the cruelties we commit in our search for freedom and the bonds from which we can never be free. Taymour Soomro's piercing insight is that both the freedom and the bonds are constituent of love' -- Garth Greenwell, author of  What Belongs to You

'A powerful, moving novel and an impressive debut '-- MOHSIN HAMID, author of Exit West

'Spell-binding, like a song overheard in the night, one you follow like a map to the singer. Other Names For Love feels both new and ancient... A masterful debut' -- ALEXANDER CHEE, author of Queen of the Night

'An elegant and affecting story about love... Other Names for Love probes the mystery of who we are by looking at the places (our homelands and wherever we flee to) and people (our parents and lovers) that forge us' -- RUMAAN ALAM, author of Leave the World Behind