The Story of a Widow

After the death of her husband, Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days--gardening, cooking, spending time with her neighbors and family in Karachi--is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig's house. Vivacious, friendly, and, at times, impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona's life. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to reconsider her past with Akbar Ahmad, and envision the future she wishes to make with her new suitor. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something so new and essential, he also exposes her to the danger of transgressing old traditions. The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society whose conventions constrain men and, particularly, women. Gently humorous, profoundly perceptive, and exceedingly clever in its cultural critique, The Story of a Widow is Musharraf Ali Farooqi's modern answer to the Victorian novel.

Review :
"A marvelous novel." --The Sunday Guardian "Tender, heartwarming and unabashedly sentimental, in Mona, Farooqi has created everyone's ideal woman: she can make you laugh and cry on the same page. The Story of A Widow is an ultra-realistic miniature in which Farooqi has evoked the tribulations of extended families and mid-life with sparse prose. If Jane Austen had grown up in a Karachi suburb, this is what she would have written." --Mohammed Hanif, author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes "This is a gem of a book and the author is a real find. At last the subcontinent can rejoice in having acquired its own avatar of the iconic Jane Austen who, with a mere half-a-dozen novels to her credit, introduced the world to a new style of literature rooted in the seemingly mundane, but breathtaking in its insights and delightful in its humour. Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an able successor in this genre. Here is the same keen observation of social mores, the sympathy for human foibles, the rapier-like wit that makes one laugh aloud and the simple, elegant prose in which it is all expressed." --India Today