Pakistani author Sarvat Hasin's debut novel deals with the lives of four daughters and the wife of a Navy captain from Karachi.
"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.
The curious young man is drawn in by all four sisters, and particularly by rebellious Ayesha.
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.
"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?
"The Captain, in his lonely room down the corridor from us, had stopped making full sentences a few weeks ago. Communication was carried out through a series of hand gestures and mumbled words. He stayed in his room most of the time, with a small bell at his elbow," he says.
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