A01=Kanza Javed
american immigrant stories
Author_Kanza Javed
Category=FBA
Category=FQ
Category=FYB
character-driven
cultural stories
culture
diaspora
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
family
family life
global literature
immersive writing
immigrant
oppression
pakistan
patriarchy
religion
south asia
tradition
Product details
- ISBN 9781324111092
- Weight: 323g
- Dimensions: 147 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 23 Sep 2025
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society. An addict teaches his young son to shoot feral dogs on the streets of Lahore. A Christian nurse gets drawn into a plan to trap the ghost of her patient’s former lover. A Pakistani student in a small Appalachian town grapples with a startling act of violence that shatters her illusions of safety and freedom. A lonely wife, trapped indoors by a harsh winter, becomes increasingly obsessed with a cloth worry doll left behind by a previous tenant.
Written with keen psychological insight and remarkable empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender and religion as Javed deftly examines questions of identity and agency, belonging and loss. What Remains After a Fire is a moving portrayal of fiercely resilient characters who desire more than what their circumstances can offer them—and what these desires ultimately cost them.
Kanza Javed is a Pakistani author with an MFA from West Virginia University, where she received the Rebecca Mason Perry Award. She is also the winner of the 2020 Reynolds Price Prize for Fiction. Her writing has been published in the American Literary Review, Punch Magazine, Salamander, and Greensboro Review, among other publications.
