July Sun

Aamina Ahmad's July Sun gathers seven stories set in a Pakistan divided by class, gender and religion. Her characters are ordinary people pressed between what they want and what is expected of them, and each is trying to claim a future that is truly their own.

The settings range from small villages, where private moments rarely stay private, to the corners of the city where people retreat from ambition and indifference. In these narrow spaces Ahmad finds a great deal of feeling. A man witnesses a stolen moment of tenderness that was never meant to be seen. A police officer has to decide whether he answers to divine law or to the law of the state. A woman faces an unexpected pregnancy and acts decisively on her own behalf.

The stories keep returning to the pull between love and duty, and between freedom and social constraint. Ahmad writes about both women and men with restraint and care, and the collection follows her debut novel, The Return of Faraz Ali, which won awards.