Millburn author Dur e Aziz Amna will read from and discuss her newly published novel, A Splintering.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dur e Aziz Amna is the author of A Splintering, winner of the Stanfords Prize for Fiction and a BBC Book Club pick. Her previous novel, American Fever, won the South Asian Book Award and the APALA Award for Literature. Her work also appears in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, among others. She was selected as Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022 and has won the Salam Prize and the Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize. She is a graduate of Yale College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. Born and raised in Pakistan, she currently lives in Millburn, NJ.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

"A lacerating novel by a writer of great insight and deep compassion." --Mohsin Hamid, author of The Last White Man

In a village in rural Pakistan, Tara is waiting and watching. The smell of dung and dust hangs over her world. She is desperate to leave the petty life of the village and escape the iron grip of her violent, unpredictable brother. Marrying a middle-class accountant allows her to escape to the capital, but she soon finds that life as a respectable housewife is not sufficient either. She wants what the rich mothers at her children’s school have. She wants what their husbands have. Her desire for wealth and freedom becomes an obsession. But can she truly shake her past? And what of the menacing spectre of her brother, a reminder of the threads that tie her to the life she left behind?

Set against a hypnotic, oppressive backdrop of political violence and natural disaster, A Splintering traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition. Disquieting and utterly gripping, it is an extraordinary achievement by Dur e Aziz Amna, an exploration of a complex and unforgettable character who will risk everything to carve out a life of her own.