Sing to the Western Wind

A Novel

Tariq Mehmood

$26.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Verso Books
04 November 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Terrorism, armed struggle

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, and Saleem Khan, an atheist, and seventy years of age, is carrying the bag.

He is also holding vivid memories -- some of regret and yearning, some humorous and yet others overshadowed by the surreal brutality of war.

In the 60s, he left his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in rural Pakistan and emigrated to Bradford, a town crackling with racism. He finds a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift, becomes an active trade unionist and when the mills close down, he drives a taxi.

But in the 1980s Pakistan draws him back, and he gets involved as the English-speaking partner in his cousin's transport business. When a truck driver he knows, does not return to base, he sets out to find him and unwittingly gets drawn across the border and into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Here, among Russian soldiers, Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, American Pirs, prostitutes and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, who receive their orders and weapons from the United States, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences in a war without end allow him to finally make sense of his own.

By: Tariq Mehmood
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Paperback original
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 244g
ISBN: 9781804295342
ISBN 10: 1804295345
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 04 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Tariq Mehmood is an award winning novelist and documentary film-maker. His first novel, Hand On the Sun (London: Penguin Books, 1983), dealt with the experience of the resistance to racism by young migrant to the UK of the 1970s and 1980s. His second novel, While There is Light (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003), was set against the backdrop of the case of the 'Bradford 12', where 12 young men who defended their community were charged with conspiracy offences. His young adult novel, You're Not Proper, is a story of two girls struggling in a town seething with Islamophobia (London: Hope Road, 2015), 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. Tariq teaches at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon.

Reviews for Sing to the Western Wind: A Novel

The author's and the characters' acute self-awareness of the familiarity of the plot, and their insistence on stressing the nuances of Saleem's journey rather than the gravity of its end, that make for a compelling read. * Kohl Journal * In reflective prose, Tariq Mehmood's kaleidoscopic novel unravels the life of man driven to the brink by political and religious violence...unflinching Sing to the Western Wind covers the human costs of imperial war in Pakistan, showing how innocence can be transformed into extremity through unjust violence: 'sometimes, even doves are slaughtered for the crime of singing.' * Foreword Reviews *