The Collaborator

(Paperback)

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Description

'Compelling . . . An important and poetic testimony to an all-too-easily forgotten war' Daily Mail By the waters running through the valleys of Kashmir, teenage boys come to play cricket, talk about girls, and just be. But a few years later, when they are young men and violence grips the region, they are gone. Only the son of the local headman has stayed. He knows his friends have slipped over the border to Pakistan, and turned militant to bear arms against the Indian army. He would like to join them - but he cannot. Instead, put in an impossible position by an Indian army Captain, he must cross into the shadowland between the opposing sides, a ghost walking among the dead. His fate, like that of his lost brothers, unknown . . . 'Waheed's prose burns with the fever of anger and despair; the scenes in the valley are exceptional, conveying, a hallucinatory living nightmare that has become an everyday reality for Kashmiris' Metro 'Possesses a disturbing power that is both lingering and profound' Independent on Sunday 'A thrilling, powerful debut' Sunday Times 'A beautifully realized account of horror, grief and the psychological trauma of war' Observer

Reviews

With flashes of brilliance, tenderness and fury, The Collaborator does what fiction should. It makes you listen * Arundhati Roy *
Devastating . . . haunting . . . gripping in its narrative drama * Guardian *
Compelling . . . An important and poetic testimony to an all-too-easily forgotten war * Daily Mail *
Waheed builds an atmosphere of menace and despair . . . his tale possesses a disturbing power that is both lingering and profound * Independent on Sunday *
A powerful first novel -- Books of the Year * Financial Times *
A thrilling, powerful debut * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. He moved to Delhi when he was eighteen to study English Literature at the University of Delhi and worked as a journalist in the city for four years. He came to London in 2001 to join the BBC's Urdu Service, where he now works as an editor.

Waheed attended the Arvon Foundation in 2007. The Collaborator is his first novel.