The Pakistani Bride

Zaitoon is an orphan taken in by Qasim, a man who left the remote hill town of his birth and built a life for the two of them in Lahore, a bright and decadent city. Over the years Qasim grows wealthy, but he also grows nostalgic for the mountains he left behind.

In a sudden, impulsive moment, he promises Zaitoon in marriage to a man from his own tribe. For a girl raised in the city, becoming the wife of a hard and unreadable husband is a shock so deep that she resolves to escape. She knows what the tribal code prescribes for a woman who runs: death.

Bapsi Sidhwa's novel looks at the lives of women, at tribal society, and at the politics of its time, through one young woman's desperate bid for freedom.