The year is 1998, the summer of Pakistan's nuclear tests, and Darashikoh Shezad has just managed to lose his job in Lahore. As the economy crumbles around him, his electricity is cut off. and the jet set parties behind high walls, Daru takes the bright steps of falling for his best friend's wife and giving heroin a try. This is the story of his decline.
'Not often does one find a first novel that has the power of imagination and skill to orchestrate personal and public themes of these consequences and achieve a chord that reverberates in one's mind. Moth Smoke is one of the... best novels I have read this year' Nadine Gordimer
'A first novel of remarkable wit, poise, profundity, and strangeness' Esquire
[An] acute depiction of young men and women trapped between two worlds' Observer
A cosmopolitan voice that is as sophisticated as it is critical' Frontline
