#ADGIFTED all thoughts and options are my own.

No Funeral for Nazia by
Taha Kehar

Book Info
Genre: Contemporary fiction, Pakistan
Length: 272 pages
Published:October 2023
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156334791-no-funeral-for-nazia
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Funeral-Nazia-Taha-Kehar-ebook/dp/B0CW9M3QGP/
Amazon US:
https://a.co/d/15RNq52

Nazia Sami is a celebrated author, but perhaps her greatest plot twist is yet to be produced. In her final days, she wields a pen one last time as she fills her diary with instructions for her sister, Naureen, and writes six letters to be delivered after her death. There is to be no funeral for Nazia. Instead, only six invitees are asked to attend a party, one of whom is a mystery guest. Over the course of an extraordinary evening, secrets are revealed, pasts reconsidered, and lives are forever changed. Perfect for fans of MOHSIN HAMID and KAMILA SHAMSIE, No Funeral for Nazia is a striking and inventive exploration of what death can mean for both the deceased and those left behind.

About the Author
Taha Kehar is a novelist, journalist and literary critic. A law graduate from SOAS, London, Kehar is the author of three novels, No Funeral for Nazia (Neem Tree Press, 2023), Typically Tanya (HarperCollins India, 2018) and Of Rift and Rivalry (Palimpsest Publishers, 2014). He is the co-editor of The Stained-Glass Window: Stories of the Pandemic from Pakistan. Kehar has served as the head of The Express Tribune’s Peshawar city pages and bi-monthly books page, and worked as an assistant editor on the op-ed desk at The News. Kehar’s essays, reviews and commentaries have been published in The News on Sunday, The Hindu and South Asia magazine and his short fiction has appeared in the Delhi-based quarterly The Equator Line, the biannual journal Pakistani Literature and the OUP anthology I’ll Find My Way. Two of his short stories appeared in an anthology titled The Banyan and Her Roots, which has been edited by the British writer Jad Adams. In 2016, he guest-edited an issue of The Equator Line, titled ‘Pakistan: After The Stereotypes’, that focused on new writing from Pakistan. Kehar curates Tales from Karachi: City of Words, an Instagram e-anthology that publishes flash fiction from and about Karachi. He recently compiled and edited the first print anthology of the initiative titled Tales from Karachi (Moringa, 2021). Based in Karachi, he teaches undergraduate media courses.

My Review When I picked this book, I had no idea how much the main premise would be effected in my real life, my friend recently died and she too asked for no funeral,but a good ole drunken knees up party 9th August. So this is a touch too close to home however it’s beautifully done and with kind words. A short story book that I feel could have been washed out further. It has friendship, love, sisterhood, but also betrayal and politics. Nazia is both loved and hated, respected and feared even in death. It carries some heavy topics which might be an issue for some readers so it’s worth taking note of trigger warnings, topics included are death, obviously and also infidelity, but also miscarriage, misogyny as expected, violence, sexual assault, rape, terminal illness, toxic relationship/friendship, gaslighting, neglect/abandonment, grief

So are mixed bag of topics touched upon,.I will say nothing was too jarring or out of place in this book.