Though I normally avoid introducing my own work, this one, my fifth, has been 26 + years in the making, so.
It began with a quote that I accidentally discovered, a British politician from the 1930s describing a group of islands to which Indian 'terrorists' were banished as a 'paradise.' He was referring to the prison colony of the Andaman Islands. At the time I found the quote, the islands were almost entirely written out of history. Women prisoners of course rarely merited even a footnote. And the Japanese had destroyed all record of their occupation of the islands during the Second World War. I'd gone to the library for another book (that I didn't find). I came away with the one I had to write.
Whose history do we believe, whose do we erase? After two decades plus of not knowing and slow knowing, chasing and dreaming material -- that I, as a Pakistani, have had limited access to my pre-Partition history IS my history -- here is The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali. The events and characters are partly based on actual ones but it is, of course, fiction.
Feels like I've been winding my way to this book my entire life.
Here's the full cover spread:
