Trespassing

An amazing story of love, lust, power, greed, self-preservation, and self-loathing. The author does an amazing job of challenging our own value system by pushing us to see how all of these powerful states of being emanate from the universal "need to belong". Trespassing is a scintillating tale of the existential angst experienced by its characters, as well as an poignant cautionary essay on how the personal becomes political and vice versa. Looking forward to Ms. Khan's next novel!

The main thread of Trespassing involves the young lovers Dia and Daanish, but a lot's already been said about them in other reviews. Also interesting to me was what happens under the surface of their story. Everything's connected, that seems to be a central idea of the book. So even the minor characters matter, like Daanish's American friend Liam, who has a pretty typical liberal attitude to the 1991 Gulf War: I didn't do it. To which Daanish asks himself, `How did Liam manage to make willful ignorance look like innocence? Perhaps this was the greatest power of a superpower.' Heavy moment for a passing incident, and it gets heavier in the context of today... Khan cleverly avoids answering such questions but she also cleverly leaves them hanging in the air, like in real life, and you're left feeling uneasy. A good book, very good, but not comforting. Yet it's written with passion and tenderness, so all is not bleak. Definitely worth reading, especially if you want something different.

This is not like other books I've ready by Indian and Pakistan authors. It stands on its own. This is not to say that it isn't about the place; it is, specifically, about Karachi during the turbulent 80s and early 90s. But the story and the very accessible and intimate style its told in resonates beyond its own borders in a way that not all subcon literature -- in fact, not all literature -- does for me, especially these days. Trespassing is charged, even fierce. And yet it is very tender. It is this combination that makes it feel so real. Plot-wise, all the many threads tie up so smoothly and at such a high dramatic pitch that I raced through this book in just three days. Then I went back and read some of my favorite passages again. Extremely powerful. A must read!

Reviewed by Patty Payette for Small Spiral Notebook "You zip me up." Daanish, a young Pakistani student, tries to explain to his secret lover, Dia, why he is compelled to seek out her company in Uzma Aslam Khan's new novel Trespassing. Torn between traditional familial and cultural expectations and his modern sensibilities, Daanish uses Dia to assuage his cultural confusion. Dia, determined to marry for love rather than convenience, seeks out Daanish as a soul mate despite the fact that he has been tapped as the suitable match for her best friend Nissrine. Khan sets the budding relationship during the tumultuous political and cultural context of Pakistan during the Gulf War. With elegant, precise prose, Khan fleshes out the margins of her story by moving back and forth in time and giving over the story telling alternately to Daanish and Dia as well as others close to the lovers, including their mothers. This narrative choice enlarges the scope of the novel, transforming this tale of star-crossed lovers into a story of cultural crisis. Much to her credit, Khan is interested in dismantling stereotypes and starts with her leading lovers. The novel opens as Daanish is called back home to Kaarachi from his college studies in the United States for his father's funeral. His semesters in "Amreeka" have been liberating, although he questions his choice of a journalism career and his ability to be the dutiful son that his father expected and his mother now needs. Introspective and sullen, loyal and creative, Daanish is an eligible, albeit moody, bachelor. Dia is the spirited daughter of a nontraditional mother who is helping her mother run her silk farm and factory while dreaming of a life beyond her circumscribed sphere. Their relationship becomes a convenient escape from the stressors of their individual pasts, presents and their looming, uncertain futures. Khan surprised and impressed this reviewer by bringing their relationship to an abrupt end with a whimper, not a bang. After their trysts are discovered, Daanish drops Dia rather than whisk her back to America. Her love complicates his burgeoning new role as his mother's provider and husband-to-be of her best friend. Their last telephone call ends with awkward silences that are as true-to-life as the bickering and kissing that marked their secret meetings. The disappointments, secrets and unspoken expectations that swirl around Daanish and Dia and their friends and family members make the title of this novel resonate with real life complexities. Trespassing spins out an intricate web of relationships while illustrating the ways in which we trespass against ourselves and each other as we grapple with a rapidly changing world and grasp for something or someone to anchor us.

This is a long book but it reads quickly. Partly this is because the many plot threads are handled so deftly, and partly it's because each individual thread is so interesting (and different from the others). There's Daanish, a Pakistani college student living in the US at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, who returns to Pakistan for his father's funeral; there's Dia, a 20-year-old Pakistani girl whose own father was murdered under mysterious cicumstances a few years ago; Salaamat, a poor kid who faces a rough time in Karachi after he's forced to leave his village; there's Anu, Daanish's mother, who is hell-bent on getting her boy married... and there are others. But these are the main ones. What they all have in common is that their stories are being told in Khan's shimmering, lyrical style that carries the reader along effortlessly even as she piles on layers of complexity. So this is a great book. And oh yeah, there's some sex, and some romance, and some politics, and some wicked Machiavellian mothers-in-law, and all sorts of fun stuff. Parts of it are funny as hell and parts of it will make you squirm. Highly recommended.