A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers:

Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeymi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig.

DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO.

For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story.

In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.

Jazbaa Definition: spirit, feeling, passion, desire, sentiment, emotion In 1996, Shaiza Khan led a Pakistan team on a tour of New Zealand and Australia. While the tour was a failure on the cricketing front, the singular act of eleven women wearing flannels and battling for victory in the faraway antipodes was a significant achievement. These women had - individually and collectively - worked to throw off the shackles of social and cultural decrees that had conspired to keep Pakistani women away from sport for years. Even more importantly, these players were harbingers of change who became heroic role models for women back home and all around the world. Unveiling Jazbaa tells the story of Pakistan's women's cricket, detailing the extraordinary journey the players have been on to bring about change both in their country and in the sport itself. This is a tale told through the lens of society and politics, of personal battles and triumphs against the odds, of friendships and rivalries, of favours and revenge. Above all else, it is story of bravery and unerring will and a moving testimony to power of the human spirit. Foreword by Kamila Shamsie 'Compelling, ambitious, beautifully written and about so much more than cricket' - Tim Wigmore, The Telegraph and author of the multiple award-winning Cricket 2.0

Rooted in place, slipping between worlds - a rich collection of unnerving ghosts and sinister histories. Eight authors were given the freedom of their chosen English Heritage site, from medieval castles to a Cold War nuclear bunker. Immersed in the past and chilled by rumours of hauntings, they channelled their darker imaginings into a series of extraordinary new ghost stories. Also includes a gazetteer of English Heritage properties which are said to be haunted.

A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers:

Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeymi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig.

DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO.

For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story.

In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.

‘A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces’ MADELINE MILLER CHOSEN AS A BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR BY THE GUARDIAN, BBC, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, IRISH TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES Maryam and Zahra. In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan’s dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome. Zahra and Maryam. In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it… Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision? An epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer

Upon changing his religion, a young man is denounced as an apostate and flees his country hiding in the back of a freezer lorry... After years of travelling and losing almost everything - his country, his children, his wife, his farm - an Afghan man finds unexpected warmth and comfort in a stranger's home... A student protester is forced to leave his homeland after a government crackdown, and spends the next 25 years in limbo, trapped in the UK asylum system... Modelled on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the second volume of Refugee Tales sets out to communicate the experiences of those who, having sought asylum in the UK, find themselves indefinitely detained. Here, poets and novelists create a space in which the stories of those who have been detained can be safely heard, a space in which hospitality is the prevailing discourse and listening becomes an act of welcome.

_______________ 'Beautifully written in cunning, punning, glancing prose' - Independent 'A whirlwind ... Owes plenty to Salman Rushdie and some to Hollywood ... Exuberant, knowingly exotic and deceptively serious' - Guardian 'Kamila Shamsie has created a rich, bright world' - Times Literary Supplement _______________ BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION The Dard-e-Dils are characterised by their prominent clavicles and love of stories. Aliya may not have inherited her family's patrician looks, but she is prey to their legends that stretch back to the days of Timur Lang. There is a sting to most of these tales, for the Dard-e-Dils consider themselves cursed by their 'not-quite' twins. Amidst her growing attraction to a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Aliya begins to believe that she is another 'not-quite' twin, linked to her scandalous aunt Mariam in a way that hardly bodes well... _______________ 'A funny, clever and romantic story' - Barbara Trapido 'The stories within the stories describe Pakistani society, its peoples and its mores, better than anything that has come from the Other Side for a long time. This is a good read' - India Today

An enthralling collection of new and classic tales of the fearsome Djinn, from bestselling, award-winning and breakthrough international writers. Imagine a world filled with fierce, fiery beings, hiding in our shadows, in our dreams, under our skins. Eavesdropping and exploring; tormenting us, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends. And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places. There is no part of the world that does not know them. They are the Djinn. With stories from Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Okorafor, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherine Faris King, Claire North, E.J. Swift, Hermes (trans. Robin Moger), Jamal Mahjoub, James Smythe, J.Y. Yang, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Logan, K.J. Parker, Kuzhali Manickavel, Maria Dahvana Headley, Monica Byrne, Saad Hossain, Sami Shah, Sophia Al-Maria and Usman Malik.

'I cannot think of a time in living memory when this book would have been more urgent or more necessary' Sarah Perry, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Essex Serpent 'There are some books which are necessary and there are some which are enjoyable and heart wrenching and wonderful; this is all of these things. A book to give to everyone you love' Daisy Johnson, Man Booker shortlisted author of Everything Under It doesn't take much familiarity with the news to see that the world has become a more hate-filled place. In Others, a group of writers explore the power of words to help us to see the world as others see it, and to reveal some of the strangeness of our own selves. Through stories, poems, memoirs and essays, we look at otherness in a variety of its forms, from the dividing lines of politics and the anonymising forces of city life, through the disputed identities of disability, gender and neurodiversity, to the catastrophic imbalances of power that stands in the way of social equality. Whether the theme is a casual act of racism or an everyday interaction with someone whose experience seems impossible to imagine, the collection challenges us to recognise our own otherness to those we would set apart as different. Profits from this book will be donated to Stop Hate UK, which works to raise awareness of hate crime and encourage its reporting, and Refugee Action, which provides advice and support to refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Contributors include: Leila Aboulela, Gillian Allnutt, Damian Barr, Noam Chomsky, Rishi Dastidar, Peter Ho Davies, Louise Doughty, Salena Godden, Colin Grant, Sam Guglani, Matt Haig, Aamer Hussein, Anjali Joseph, A. L. Kennedy, Joanne Limburg, Rachel Mann, Tiffany Murray, Sara Novic, Edward Platt, Alex Preston, Tom Shakespeare, Kamila Shamsie, Will Storr, Preti Taneja and Marina Warner. 'An impressive cluster of names' New Statesman'Another superlative anthology from Unbound' The Bookseller

_______________ 'A boisterous tribute to her home town that crackles with the chaos of Pakistani political life' - The Times 'Deftly woven and provocative ... Shamsie's blistering humour and ear for dialogue scorches through their whirl of whisky and witticisms' - Observer 'You will notice very quickly that you're reading a book by someone who can write ... Above all, Kartography is a love story. And if you're not sniffling by, or in fact on, page 113, you're reading the wrong book' - Guardian _______________ BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS PRIZE _______________ Soul mates from birth, Karim and Raheen finish one another's sentences, speak in anagrams and lie spine to spine. They are irrevocably bound to one another and to Karachi, Pakistan. It beats in their hearts - violent, polluted, corrupt, vibrant, brave and ultimately, home. As the years go by they let a barrier of silence build between them until, finally, they are brought together during a dry summer of strikes and ethnic violence and their relationship is poised between strained friendship and fated love. _______________ 'Perceptive, funny and poignant' - Times Literary Supplement 'A touching love story, with the city of Karachi beating at its heart' - Daily Mail 'A gorgeous novel of perimeters and boundaries, of the regions - literal and figurative - in which we're comfortable moving about and those through which we'd rather not travel' - Los Angeles Times

_______________ 'Full of fun, longing and wit … a debut of spirit and imagination, loaded with intelligent charm' - Ali Smith 'A touching and engrossing story … an assured debut' - The Times 'A colourful and peripatetic view of politics in Pakistan … an interesting and promising novel' - Guardian _______________ BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS PRIZE _______________ Hasan is eleven years old. He loves cricket, pomegranates, the night sky, his clever, vibrant artistic mother and his etymologically obsessed lawyer father, and he adores his next-door neighbour Zehra. One early summer morning, while lazing happily on the roof, Hasan watches a young boy flying a yellow kite fall to his death. Soon after, Hasan's idyllic, sheltered family life is shattered when his beloved uncle Salman, a dissenting politician, is arrested and charged with treason... Set in a land ruled by an oppressive military regime, this eloquent, charming and quietly political novel vividly recreates the confusing world of a young boy on the edge of adulthood, and beautifully illustrates the transformative power of the imagination.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

How can love survive betrayal?

For as long as they can remember, siblings Isma, Aneeka and Parvaiz have had nothing but each other. But darker, stronger forces will divide Parvaiz from his sisters and drive him to the other side of the world, as he sets out to fulfil the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

Sunlight on a Broken Column, first published in 1961, is an unforgettable coming-of-age story set against the turbulent background of Partition. 'The deftness with which Attia Hosain handles the interplay of manners, class, culture and different forms of female power is gorgeously done . . . Laila is such a remarkable heroine - sharp, spirited and passionate' - KAMILA SHAMSIE 'An extraordinary novel, with an extraordinary heroine. Laila - even from the confines of the women's quarters - is a sharp observer of the tumultuous politics, and the cultural, racial, and religious conflicts of the dying days of the Raj. There is such richness here, waiting to be rediscovered. And readers will fall in love with Laila' MONICA ALI 'My life changed. It had been restricted by invisible barriers almost as effectively as the physically restricted lives of my aunts in the zenana. A window had opened here, a door there, a curtain had been drawn aside; but outside lay a world narrowed by one's field of vision' Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather's traditional household by her aunts, who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of her 'liberal' but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. As the struggle for Independence sharpens, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics, but she is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against tradition. With its stunning evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column is a classic of Muslim life. Attia Hosain published only two books, but her writing has influenced generations of writers. Discover Phoenix Fled, Hosain's acclaimed short-story collection, also published in Virago Modern Classics.

'Wonderful ... all killer, no filler' Red Magazine 'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror 'Where power and feminist rage meet' Stylist ______________________________ A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers: Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeymi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO. For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time. 'A slick collection of clever tales, with something for bluestockings and banshees alike' Guardian 'Delightful, thought-provoking' Louisa Young, Perspectives

An Orange Prize Finalist
Beginning on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, and ending in a prison cell in the US in 2002, as a man is waiting to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, "Burnt Shadows "is an epic narrative of love and betrayal.

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and, in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound these families together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.

Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the United States. Two of her previous novels, "Kartography "and "Broken Verses," have won awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She writes for "The Guardian" (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.
With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and, in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound these families together over decades and generations are tested by wars and disasters, with unforeseeable consequences.

"Shamsie stitches together a sweeping saga that begins with a young Japanese woman in wartime Nagasaki and ends, more than half a century later, with a Pakistani prisoner about to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The tale unfolds through the lives of two unusually multinational (and multilingual) families: the Weiss-Burtons (German, British and American) and the Ashraf-Tanakas (Indian/Pakistani and Japanese). Not counting minor detours, their triumphs and tragedies span five countries and, without giving too much away, at least three world-changing historical events. On the face of it, collapsing so broad a canvas in a relatively slender novel is a recipe for chaos worthy of a subcontinental urban planner. But in Ms. Shamsie's self-assured hands this does not come to pass. The story line remains taut, the characters vividly etched. Even the implausible romance at the heart of the novel--between Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Sajjad Ashraf, a young aesthete forced to emigrate from Delhi to Karachi in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India--is somehow rendered believable. Ms. Shamsie is . . . as a cartographer of culture. She notes, for instance, that in Indo-Muslim society the emotional terrain of mourning is often communal rather than personal; Urdu contains no phrase for leaving a person alone with his grief. The siren call of modernity--with its implicit privileging of the nuclear family over the extended clan--can be deeply disturbing. As the matriarch of the undivided Ashraf family in pre-partition Delhi declares archly, 'maa-dern' is a word 'created only to cut you off from your people and your past.' Sajjad's failure to try sushi after 35 years with Hiroko tells you all you need to know about the persistence of inherited attitudes that span everything from the loyalty of taste buds to the mental geography of marriage. In the end, for all its insights into the cultural and familial, this is above all a political novel. The choice of a Japanese protagonist allows the author to question much of the received wisdom of what used to be called the War on Terror. As a young teacher in Nagasaki, Hiroko has known adolescent boys as eager to embrace the cult of martyrdom as any young mujahideen. In General Zia's concerted effort to drag Islam out of the home and into the public square, she sees the echo of Japanese emperor worship. The implication of these observations, of course, is that criticism of Islam is unwarranted. Not that long ago it was followers of Shintoism who were turning aircraft into missiles while dreaming of immortality . . . A cleverly constructed and powerfully imagined novel. Ultimately, as with any work of the imagination, the color of the politics matters much less than the quality of the prose."--Wall Street Journal Online, Asia edition
"Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world's many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. "Burnt Shadows" is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response."--Salman Rushdie
""Burnt Shadows" is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author's intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions."--Anita Desai
"In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through--pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through--the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty's lair."--Nadeem Aslam, author of "Maps for Lost Lovers
"""Burnt Shadows" is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I've (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come."--Tahmima Anam, author of "The Golden Age
""An epic tale of two families whose lives are intertwined by conflict.

Eight authors were given after hours freedom at their chosen English heritage site. Immersed in the history, atmosphere and rumours of hauntings, they channelled their darker imaginings into a series of extraordinary new ghost stories. Sarah Perry's intense tale of possession at the Jacobean country house Audley End is a work of psychological terror, while Andrew Michael Hurley's story brings an unforgettably shocking slant to the history of Carlisle Castle. Within the walls of these historic buildings each author has found inspiration to deliver a new interpretation of the classic ghost story. Relish the imagined terrors at these exhilarating locations: Kate Clanchy, Housesteads Roman Fort | Stuart Evers, Dover Castle | Mark Haddon, York Cold War Bunker | Andrew Michael Hurley, Carlisle Castle | Sarah Perry, Audley End | Max Porter Eltham Palace | Kamila Shamsie, Kenilworth Castle | Jeanette Winterson, Pendennis Castle

9 August, 1945, Nagasaki: Hiroko Tanaka, twenty-one and in love with Konrad Weiss, the man she is about to marry, steps out onto her veranda, minutes before a nuclear explosion shatters her world and everything in it.
Travelling to Delhi two years later in search of new beginnings, she meets Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf. As the years unravel, the shadows of history - personal and political - are cast over the entwined worlds these people inhabit as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11.

'There is so much to love and admire in these stories - their understanding of heartbreak, their attention to affection and love across many divides' KAMILA SHAMSIE 'Listen to me, child. You will be a woman soon and must behave well and with modesty. The Kazi will ask you three times whether you will marry Kalloo Mian. Now don't you be shameless, like these modern girls, and shout gleefully "Yes". Be modest and cry softly and say "Hoon".' A marriage is arranged between a little servant girl and a middle-aged cook with an opium habit; an idealistic political worker faces disillusionment; a man returns from years studying in England to a wife he scarcely knows; a conventional bride has her first encounter with her husband's 'emancipated' friends. Telling of the lives of servants and children, of conflict between the old traditions and new ways, and exploring the human repercussions of the Muslim/Hindu divide, these twelve stories present a moving and vivid picture of life in India in the mid-twentieth century. To each episode Attia Hosain brings a superb imaginative understanding and a sense of the poignancy of the smallest of human dramas. Attia Hosain published only two books, but her writing has influenced generations of writers. Discover Sunlight on a Broken Column, Hosain's acclaimed only novel - a coming-of-age story set against the turbulent background of Partition, also published in Virago Modern Classics.

_______________ CHOSEN AS A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES 'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' - Madeline Miller 'A shining tour de force' - Ali Smith, Guardian Summer Reading 'An intimate study of the ties that bind us' - Stylist _______________ A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction Sometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people... Maryam and Zahra. In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome. Zahra and Maryam. In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it... Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision? _______________ 'A new Kamila Shamsie novel is always worth celebrating, but Best of Friends is something else: an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' - Observer, Books of the Year 2022

Born in what is now Ukraine to Polish parents, naturalised as a British citizen, and schooled on the high seas of international commerce, Joseph Conrad was a true citizen of the world. His novels bore witness to the dehumanising repercussions of empire, explored a world in which state-sponsored terrorism ruined individuals' lives, and pioneered complex narrative structures and subjective points-of-view in what was to become the first wave of literary modernism. To mark his 160th birthday, 14 authors and critics from Britain, Poland and elsewhere have come together to celebrate his legacy with new pieces of fiction and non-fiction. Conrad felt that the writer's task was to offer 'that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.' In an age of increasing isolationism, these celebrations remind you of the value of such glimpses. Commissioned as part of the Joseph Conrad Year 2017.

Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan's greatest poet, was beaten to death by government thugs. In present-day Karachi, her daughter Aasmaani has just discovered a letter in the couple's private code-a letter that could only have been written recently.
Aasmaani is thirty, single, drifting from job to job. Always left behind whenever Samina followed the Poet into exile, she had assumed that her mother's disappearance was simply another abandonment. Then, while working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmaani runs into an old friend of Samina's who gives her the first letter, then many more. Where could the letters have come from? And will they lead her to her mother?
Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how we forgive a mother who leaves.