"This Wide Night", published by Hamish Hamilton, has made it to the longlist of this year's DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
The Maliks live a life of relative freedom in 1970s Karachi: four beautiful sisters - Maria, Ayesha, Leila and Beena, are warily watched over by their unconventional mother Mehrunissa.
Captain Malik is usually away, and so the women forge the rules of their own universe, taking in a few men: Amir, the professor who falls in love with Maria, and Jamal or Jimmy, the neighbour who tells this tale in a three-part narrative.
But slowly, it becomes clear he will never completely penetrate their circle - just as they will never completely move with the tide that swirls so potently around them. The novel moves from Karachi to London and finally to the rain-drenched island of Manora.
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"Some strange things were happening in the house. Outside, the tides were rising and the city seemed even farther away," Jimmy says about life in the island.
"Those days, I was the only one who left the island. I brought back cigars for the Captain and presents for my wife and her sisters but they sat untouched?