Who Knows The Bounds Of Desire

A well-ventilated novel, where the winds blow in from every quarter, representing a city mired in the frantic present and an insoluble past, with a distracted opulence, half-salvaged and half-abandoned. The narrative dives into a mirror-like depth, as if in a state of dereliction, showing old houses, back alleys, civic modernity, gardens and graveyards. Images and voices pile up and intermingle, reduced sometimes to shadows and whispers, fading in and out, as if part of an incomprehensible play. Narratives implode as they invariably do when handled by a prescient author. Osama Siddique is an expert handler, playing with a remote, as characters and vistas appear and vanish. Here is a novel, taking an unruffled look at the troubled and the troublesome and the ridiculous, and completely at home with what it depicts. A very likable spell-binder.

— M. SALIM-UR-RAHMAN

OSAMA SIDDIQUE grew up in Lahore, and studied at Government College and LUMS. He then read law as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and obtained master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard Law School, where he has also taught as a visiting professor. He has worked as a corporate lawyer in New York, as an advocate of appellate courts, a legal scholar, university teacher and reform consultant in Pakistan, and as a law and policy instructor in many other countries. He is the author of two books and multiple other publications in the legal field, and has also published two previous novels in English and Urdu to critical and popular acclaim—Snuffing Out the Moon and Ghuroob e Shehr Ka Waqt. He lives in Lahore.