Cover art by Jade They
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UK:
“Ali privileges exploring the yearnings of her characters over their eventual fates, and in her hands the characters are protected from becoming voiceless victims of systemic oppression.” – Munib Khan in World Literature Today
“In this teeming maelstrom of (in)humanity, Ali posits a wrenching, everyman tragedy that shrewdly reads as prophetic warning, nimbly cast in potent storytelling.” – Shelf Awareness
“In this story about the irrevocable forces of change, climate catastrophe is inseparable from demographic peril. A tender family portrait, depicted with nostalgia and empathy for a precarious way of life.” – Kirkus
“A deep and powerful work of literary climate fiction…Farah Ali’s is a fresh voice in fiction, a voice that risks and rewards the reader with a deeper understanding of their own condition. Her scope is global but also deeply personal…An outstanding addition to what I hope is a long-lasting and prolific career.”
– Independent Book Review
“Ali’s measured and straightforward writing style allows readers to peel back the emotional layers and reflect on their lingering ideas of spaces long after the book is done.” – browngirlbookshelf
“From rural town to urban city, this story brilliantly examines family, love, and inequity in times of economic and ecological precarity.” – Ms. Magazine
“A slow-burn swan song, The River, The Town is a wrenching novel about aspirations born amid a drought of opportunity. In prose as austere as her characters are complex, Ali delves where striving and loyalties collide, unearthing a tale at once timeless yet viscerally entrenched in the rural and urban realities of Pakistan.” – Jakob Guanzon, author of Abundance
“The story of urbanization, the divide between urban and rural, the burning desire to trade the province for the metropolis, is at the heart of modern South Asia. Farah Ali takes this story and turns it into a tremendously personal tale of a single family. The stench of poverty that Farah’s characters carry on themselves is its own animal, sharing space on every page. Farah has expertly crafted characters whose lives are overrun by economic struggle and climate change, sketching them in with electrifying details, unwavering compassion, and impressive clarity. There is none of the romanticization of struggle, no simplification of precarity, that so often makes its way into South Asian English-language fiction. The prose is stark and unadorned, but it has burned itself on my mind, and will do so with other lucky readers as well. This book is a marvelous achievement.” – Dur e Aziz Amna, author of American Fever
“Told in spare, lovely prose, The River, The Town, tautly and magnetically juxtaposes climate-induced poverty with fraught family relationships. Ali’s portrayal of Meena, Baadal and Raheela at different stages of their lives, probing compassionately into memories, dreams, overheard conversations, will stay with you long after the last page. A must for any reader interested in the human impact of climate-induced scarcity and sustained hope.” – Chaya Bhuvaneswar, author of White Dancing Elephants: Stories
“Farah Ali’s stunning debut illustrates how even the deepest love can be corrupted by the encroaching devastation of a planet in crisis. An impoverished, drought-plagued town backdrops a tense family drama between a mother, her son, and the woman he loves. In this lushly painted world, villagers sleep on the ground, fight for food, and die from preventable illnesses, yet joy always manages to break through as does love – desperate, wounded, intimate, and true. The River, The Town surveys the losses we bring upon ourselves, the losses forced upon us by an unforgiving world, and the gains when we persevere.”
– Laura Warrell, author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty, Rhythm
Farah Ali 