... quietly stunning...stunning not only on account of the writer’s talent, of which there is clearly plenty, but also in its humanity, in how a book this unflinching in its depiction of class and institutional injustice can still feel so tender ... Given that perhaps the most exhausted narrative container in American cultural life is the murder investigation... it would be easy for readers and booksellers to categorize this story as something in that vein. But Ahmad has taken on an entirely different kind of storytelling. Over the sweep of the novel’s middle, and especially in its quiet yet crushing conclusion, the fullness of the characters and their intersecting lives makes this far more than a murder mystery ... Where the novel sags, it’s when the narrative broadens from its tight focus into intergenerational saga. But it is a short interlude; the characters are too real, as is the violent collision of their scheming and resignation, the depths of their wanting ... It is difficult to write a novel like this one and not contend with a spectrum of violence. There is immense misery in this book. Ahmad has done her research, and the world she constructs is fictional, but tethered to the world as it was, and in some places still is ... At the line level, Ahmad has a habit of wielding softness against the most grotesque scenes, giving them an intimacy anything louder would likely wash out ... Ahmad’s compassion and deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters never wavers, no matter how monstrous or self-interested or defeated they become ... extends through generations and transformations of place, all the way to a devastating final chapter, fully human, fully engaged with what makes us human, no matter the size of the wounds or the immunity of those who inflict them. The powerful might often escape consequences, Ahmad shows, but life without these is its own kind of poverty, its own miserable inheritance.

This a nuanced, many-faceted story, fraught with complex interrelations of ethnicity, class and politics, of a man trying to unlock the secrets of his past so that he might discover who he is in the present. A first-rate literary mystery with the emphasis on literary.

With each character’s journey, author Ahmad explores the multifaceted nature of longing and loss and what the loneliness they engender is all for. This novel has everything a reader could ask for: a sizzling, noirlike plot; political intrigue juxtaposed with a rich intergenerational family saga; capacious, conflicted characters, including women who may be marginalized by society but are masters of their own narratives; and sublime sentences. A debut novelist, Ahmad manages this complexity seamlessly ... A feat of storytelling not to be missed.

The author does a good job interweaving the characters’ personal drama with political unrest in Pakistan, but the constant switches in perspectives and time frames can feel jarring, and the truth behind Sonia’s murder is only fleetingly hinted at. Ahmad shines the most in her piercing observations of the marginalized and oppressed: Rozina muses that loss is merely 'the condition of a woman’s life,' while a Bengali officer resigns himself to dying in the fight for his people’s independence. It is this keen eye for the vicissitudes of human life that, despite an uneven whole, demonstrates Ahmad’s promise.