In the Black Mountains of Pakistan, the discovery of an unconscious, unknown man is the first snowball in an avalanche of chaos. The head of the village is beset with problems - including the injured stranger - and failing to find his way out. His daughter receives a love letter and incurs her father's wrath. A lame boy foretells disaster, but nobody is listening. Trapped in terrible danger, a wolf-dog is battling ice and death to save a soldier's life. Beaten by her addict husband for bearing him only daughters, a woman is pregnant again - but can this child save her?

All the while, the spirits of the mountains keep a baleful eye on the doings of the humans. In a land woven with myth, chained with tradition and afflicted by ongoing conflict and the march of progress, can the villagers find a way to co-exist with nature that doesn't destroy either of them?

"In writing through the eyes of an American captive in Afghanistan, Feryal Ali Gauhar has fashioned a fascinating two-way mirror in which we see the author creating an Other confronting Otherness. As in Richard Powers's hostage novel Ploughing in the Dark, the mask of character reveals as much as it conceals" - * STEWART O'NAN *

"Praise for The Scent of Wet Earth in August: The Scent of Wet Earth in August was widely acclaimed across the globe . . . it blends Ali Gauhar's filmmaking sensibilities . . . the relentless experience of loss, of the endangered lives of the moral "others" - the outcasts in the much loved and hated red-light district of Lahore" - * Friday Times *

"Deeply perceptive and immensely readable tale of decaying poverty yet to come to terms with modernity, yet full of warmth, life and gusto . . . The rich kaleidoscope of Lahore's life emerging from the book astonishes us . . . The book is as welcome as the scent of wet earth in August" - * Deccan Chronicle *

"The treat is in the writing; it is vibrant and cinematic . . . Ali Gauhar's reader is a step behind the character . . . meeting all its residents, feeling the lecherous gaze of its knick-knack seller . . . Fatimah and Shabbir's secret love wraps itself like a translucent tendril around the thorny bramble of society's repression" - * Indian Express *

"Writing with a sharp and sensitive pen, Feryal Ali Gauhar captures some poignant moments of lives lived less. A celebration of the burlesque, a grim reminder of the parody that life can finally become" - * Hindu *

"Presents an aspect of reality so overpowering in its merciless grimness that one can readily see how a sensitive individual might well come to believe that this, indeed, was what real life was about, and the joy and the health of the human spirit were just fleeting visitors" - * Deccan Herald *