This summer's the 20th birthday of Trespassing, first published in June 2003 and later translated into 14 languages in 18 countries.
The book began after I left Morocco for Arizona, carrying with me clippings of the media's Islamophobic coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. I also carried articles on silkworm rearing in Pakistan-- the revival of the natural silk production in the country fascinated me, as did the insects' wondrous life cycles. And so the book began to spin its own cocoon, the many story threads seeming to weave themselves, all unfolding during the 1979-89 Afghan War and 1991 Gulf War, and the aftermaths of both--the period when I grew up. The book was already in production when the next bombing of Iraq began in 2003.
Though my second novel, Trespassing was the first to be published internationally. I'd no experience of the hefty publicity expectations that writers (esp. from underrepresented backgrounds) carry. At an English PEN event, people came up to me to say I was 'so shy' and 'reclusive'; I was overall overwhelmed. But I enjoyed meeting Nicola Smyth for The Independent, in which she wrote:
'Trespassing was completed several months before the events of September 2001. Its focus on the first Gulf War, and on previous Afghan conflicts, leaves (Khan) unsettled by her own unwitting prescience.'
Read the full profile here. Others have since cited the book as a kind of forerunner of post- 9/11 fiction from the region.
Among the scenes I enjoyed writing most are those on Dia's silkworm farm outside Karachi; I kept the cocoons to better understand these cycles. Parts that tug, still, involve Salaamat and his devotion to truck art, even as he gets embroiled in a war that he longs to escape, but can't.
For more on the book, please visit my website here for reviews & here for interviews.
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