Book Talk: A Splintering with Dur e Aziz Amna

Join us for a discussion of author Dur e Aziz Amna's latest book, A Splintering! Dure will be joined in conversation by Chicago author Faisal Mohyuddin! Q&A and book signing to follow!

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"A lacerating novel by a writer of great insight and deep compassion."

-Mohsin Hamid, author of The Last White Man

"Smart and gripping - I read it in one sitting. Tara is a glorious creation, crackling with life and aspiration and sensuality."

-Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire​

A perfect book club read for those who love morally gray women

In a village in rural Pakistan, Tara is watching and waiting. The smell of dung and dust hangs over her world. She is desperate to leave her petty life in the village and escape the iron grip of her violent, unpredictable brother.

Marrying a middle-class accountant allows her to escape to the capital, but she soon finds that life as a respectable housewife is not enough. She wants what the rich mothers at her children's school have. Her desire for wealth and freedom becomes an obsession--one for which she'll push her marriage and herself to the brink. When her brother comes back into her life, dragging the specter of all she's escaped, Tara must decide if there are any lines she won't cross to live the life she deserves.

Set against a hypnotic, oppressive backdrop of political violence and natural disaster, A Splintering traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition. Disquieting and utterly gripping, it is an extraordinary achievement by Dur e Aziz Amna, an exploration of a complex and unforgettable character who will risk everything to carve out a life of her own.

Dur e Aziz Amna is the author of A Splintering, winner of the Stanfords Prize for Fiction and a BBC Book Club pick. Her previous novel, American Fever, won the South Asian Book Award and the APALA Award for Literature. Her work also appears in the Financial Times, Al Jazeera, and The Drift, among others. She was selected as Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022 and has won the Salam Prize and the Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize. Born and raised in Pakistan, she currently resides in the US.

Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (Next Page Press, 2024), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children (Eyewear Publishing, 2018), and The Riddle of Longing (Backbone Press, 2017; updated edition forthcoming from Bull City Press). He teaches high school English in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies.