The Concubine and the Slave-Catcher

Qaisra Shahraz
Published by HopeRoad

Synopsis by Dr. Claire Chambers, author and editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, University of York’

An old man in Manchester dreams of his previous life in Pakistan, but on returning there realises he is no longer sure where home is. Two married couples from different cultures come into conflict over tourism, disability and betrayal in Malaysia. The horrors of the Holocaust and Birkenau concentration camp are writ large in one pregnant woman’s experiences. A young woman finds her engagement broken off because her fiancé’s family disapprove of her walking attire. Two women suffer the consequences when they breach superstitions around miscarriage in a Pakistani village. The sundering of India and Pakistan in the 1947 partition is revealed when a Muslim boy is adopted by a Hindu family during the chaos of mass migration. A British man witnesses the hard lot of Afghan workers in the Gulf. A family tries to cover up the shame of an elder daughter running away with her boyfriend. A well-meaning abolitionist learns the sordid and violent truth about slavery from her African American servants.