Still Lives – Renard Press

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Bibliographic information:
ISBN: 9781913724580
Paperback • 320pp • £10
129 mm x 198 mm
29 June 2022
BIC: FA

Territory: World English (excl. Indian Subcontinent)

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Still Lives

Reshma Ruia

Paperback

320pp

ISBN: 9781913724580

£10.00

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‘The glow of my cigarette picks out a dark shape lying on the ground. I bend down to take a closer look. It’s a dead sparrow. I wondered if I had become that bird, disoriented and lost.’

Young, handsome and contemptuous of his father’s traditional ways, PK Malik leaves Bombay to start a new life in America. Stopping in Manchester to visit an old friend, he thinks he sees a business opportunity, and decides to stay on. Now fifty-five, PK has fallen out of love with life. His business is struggling and his wife Geeta is lonely, pining for the India she’s left behind.

One day PK crosses the path of Esther, the wife of his business competitor, and they launch into an affair conducted in shabby hotel rooms, with the fear of discovery forever hanging in the air. Still Lives is a tightly woven, haunting work that pulls apart the threads of a family and plays with notions of identity.

Shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize

Winner of the Reader’s Choice Award at the Diverse Book Awards 2023

e-book available*

A beautifully written, heartbreaking novel about the choices we make in life.

Alison Stockham, author of The Cuckoo Sister

An expertly crafted novel, filled with light-touch prose and inhabitable scenes, threaded with compelling and believable dialogue. It’s a book you can lose yourself in, and I did.

Adam Farrer, author of Cold Fish Soup

Through small moments and big changes Still Lives captures beautifully and painfully how it is to live across two countries, nowhere feeling quite like home.

Laura Besley, author of 100nehundred and The Almost Mothers

Ruia’s extraordinary skill lies in capturing the landscape of diasporic lives… Still Lives is a heart-rending evocation of a life in crisis. This is your must-read book for the summer.

Selma Carvalho, Joao-Roque Literary Journal

This book grabs you from the get-go. Compelling characters, fantastic prose, sexy, funny and wise.

Heidi James, author of The Sound Mirror and So the Doves

This book had my attention from the first page. Stunning. Heartbreaking. And so very real.

Khurrum Rahman, author of East of Hounslow and Homegrown Hero

Lyrical, funny and at times haunting, Still Lives is an urgent novel that deserves to be read widely. It had me reading well into the night. Beautiful!

Awais Khan, author of No Honour and In the Company of Strangers

Reshma Ruia

Reshma Ruia is an award-winning author and poet. Her first novel was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy’. She has published a poetry collection and a short story collection; her work has appeared in international anthologies and journals, and she has had work commissioned by the BBC. She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani – a writers’ collective of British South Asian writers. Born in India and brought up in Rome, her writing explores the preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging.