In the City by the Sea

Hasan is eleven years old. He loves cricket, pomegranates, his clever, vibrant, artistic mother and his etymologically obsessed lawyer father. He adores his next-door neighbour Zehra - despite the fact that she seems suddenly very interested in his fourteen-year-old cousin Najam with his one chest hair.

When his beloved uncle Salman, a dissenting politician, is arrested and charged with treason, Hasan is brought face-to-face with the precariousness of the world around him and the mortal vulnerability of those he loves. Hasan secretly resolves to save his uncle. This eloquent, charming and quietly political novel is set in a land ruled by an oppressive military regime, and vividly recreates the confusing world of a young boy on the edge of adulthood.