Edgware Road

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A wide-ranging and affecting debut novel about family and identity, from an award-winning historian. 1981. Khalid Quraishi is one of the lucky ones. He works nights in the glitzy West End, and comes home every morning to his beautiful wife and daughter. He's a world away from Karachi and the family he left behind. But Khalid likes to gamble, and he likes to win. Twenty pounds on the fruit machine, fifty on a sure-thing horse, a thousand on an investment that seems certain to pay out. Now he's been offered a huge opportunity, a chance to get in early with a new bank, and it looks like he'll finally have his big win. 2003. Alia Quraishi doesn't really remember her dad. After her parents' divorce she hardly saw him, and her mum refuses to talk about her charming ex-husband. So, when he died in what the police wrote off as a sad accident, Alia had no reason to believe there was more going on. Now almost twenty years have passed and she's tired of only understanding half of who she is. Her dad's death alone and miles from his west London stomping ground doesn't add up with the man she knew. If she's going to find out the truth about her father and learn about the other half of herself Alia is going to have to visit his home, a place she's never been, and connect with a family that feel more like strangers. 'Part family mystery, part immigrant hustle, Edgware Road is a complete tour de force... Khan calls up all the ghosts that prowl between children and their parents, between immigrants and their homelands, between our dreams of wealth and our hunger for love, and exorcises them with prose so lapidary and understanding so vast Khan's novel is like unto a blessing' Junot Daz

Reviews

Part family mystery, part immigrant hustle, Edgware Road is a complete tour de force... Khan calls up all the ghosts that prowl between children and their parents, between immigrants and their homelands, between our dreams of wealth and our hunger for love, and exorcises them with prose so lapidary and understanding so vast Khan's novel is like unto a blessing' -- Junot Daz
Poised to be one of the debuts of the season * Vogue India *
A brilliant, intriguing novel about identity and family. The smells and sounds of 1980s London leap from the page and the characters feel so real that I can hardly believe they're not -- Louise Hare
At a time when travelling is almost impossible, this beautiful novel transported me. An elegant and moving book from a highly promising new voice in fiction -- Sathnam Sanghera
A book for readers of Bernardine Evaristo and Zadie Smith * Vogue India *
A gripping mixture of mystery, family drama and insights into the immigrant experience, Khan's expansive debut depicts two generations of a London Pakistani family, and the secrets of an estranged father that keep haunting his daughter years after his death * Waterstones *
A moving, evocative read * Woman's Own *
An incredibly accomplished debut... This is an affecting debut focussed on the themes of family and identity -- Adele Parks

Author Bio

Yasmin Cordery Khan is an historian and broadcaster. She is the author of The Great Partition (for which she won the Gladstone Prize for History), and The Raj at War, and has written for the Guardian and the Observer. Edgware Road is her first novel.