Season of the rainbirds - Nadeem Aslam

The highly acclaimed and Betty Trask Award winning debut from the author of Maps for Lost Lovers

A sack of letters lost in a train crash nineteen years previously has mysteriously reappeared, and the inhabitants of a small town in Pakistan are waiting anxiously to see what long buried secrets will come to light. Could the letters have any bearing on Judge Anwar's murder?

In one of the most exquisite fictional debuts of recent years, Nadeem Aslam creates an exotic and timeless world, but one whose traditional rituals of everyday life are played out against an ominous backdrop of faraway civil wars, assassinations, changing regimes, and religious tensions.
'Vivid and poignant.' Evening Standard

'Poised and troubling.' The Times

'A real treat.' Daily Telegraph

'One of the most impressive first novels of recent years.' Salman Rushdie

Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan and now lives in England. He is the author of four previous novels, most recently The Blind Man's Garden. His work has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and won the Kiriyama and Windham Campbell prizes and the Lannan and Encore Awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

'Nadeem Aslam's dense, smart novel ... Aslam's debut novel, first published in 1993 and reissued after the success of Maps for Lost Lovers, poses a mystery and then piles on incident.
The novelist never overplays his hand as he puzzles out who had an axe to grind.'
Telegraph - James Francken