The next book to be featured this season on the Sara Cox Radio 2 Book Club is A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna—an unforgettable story of motherhood, obsession and ambition.
The book was released on 4 September and Dur e Aziz Amna’s interview with Sara is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 16 September.
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Read an exclusive extract.
A Splintering
In a village in rural Pakistan, Tara is waiting and watching. The smell of dung and dust hangs over her world. She is desperate to leave the petty life of the village and escape the iron grip of her violent, unpredictable brother. Marrying a middle-class accountant allows her to escape to the capital, but she soon finds that life as a respectable housewife is not sufficient either. She wants what the rich mothers at her children’s school have. She wants what their husbands have. Her desire for wealth and freedom becomes an obsession. But can she truly shake her past? And what of the menacing spectre of her brother, a reminder of the threads that tie her to the life she left behind?
Set against a hypnotic, oppressive backdrop of political violence and natural disaster, A Splintering traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition. Disquieting and utterly gripping, it is an extraordinary achievement by Dur e Aziz Amna, an exploration of a complex and unforgettable character who will risk everything to carve out a life of her own.
About the author
Dur e Aziz Amna is from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and now lives in Newark, USA. Her debut novel, _American Fever_, was published in 2023 and won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the South Asia Book Award. Her work also appears in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, among others. She was selected as Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022, and won the 2019 Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize. She is a graduate of Yale College and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
A word from Dur e Aziz Amna
“I’m absolutely over the moon that A Splintering has been chosen as a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick. It’s even more heartening that the book was selected by The Reading Agency with the help of book lovers and librarians. Growing up without cable TV or much spending money in 90s Pakistan, I relied exclusively on a local library to be my conduit to the world. I’m grateful for this honour, and for the new readers it will introduce my work to. A Splintering is the story of a young woman who keeps wanting more and more. With its themes of motherhood, ambition, and the interference of history in ordinary people’s lives, it offers a lot for readers and book clubs to mull over and discuss.”
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