Sing to the Western Wind A Novel

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, and Saleem Khan, an atheist, is carrying the bag

In 1960s Bradford, having left his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in rural Pakistan, Saleem finds the north of England crackling with racism, and a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift. And when the mills close down, he finds himself listlessly driving a taxi.

Two decades later, a return to Pakistan leads Saleem down a dangerous path. Drawn into the turmoil of war, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life in a conflict without end finally allows him to make sense of his own actions.

Moving, tense and thought-provoking, Tariq Mehmood explores the decisions and happenstances that determine a life within the malestom of our times, and what makes an unlikely fanatic.

Tariq Mehmood is an award-winning novelist and documentary film-maker. He is the author of Hand On the Sun, and While There is Light. His young adult novel, You’re Not Proper, won the Francis Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award. He is the co-director of the multiple award-winning documentary Injustice, a story about people who have died in British police custody. He teaches at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon.