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Other Names for Love
Other Names for Love
Dec 2, 2025 3:34 PM

Author:Taymour Soomro

Other Names for Love

On the train from Karachi, as dusk begins to fall, Fahad's dreams of his summer in London are fading. He is headed to Abad, the family's feudal estate, where his father intends to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family -- to make him a man.

Instead, over the course of one shimmering, indolent season, Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and by the people he meets: those who revere and revile his father; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and Ali, a teenager like him, whose presence threatens to unearth all that is hidden.

Other Names for Love is a truly exceptional novel: a luminous tale of memory and desire, inheritance and love, and the search for a sense of home. Written with urgency and unusual beauty, it marks the arrival of a stunning new voice in fiction.

Reviews

A beautiful novel on the desire to leave and the hope to remain, the need to find oneself among one's people and away from them

—— HISHAM MATAR, author of The Return

An exceptional novel about fathers and sons, desire and love, and the long reach of the past

—— SUNJEEV SAHOTA, author of China Room

Such a deftly told and evocative story of duty, masculinity and desire

—— KAMILA SHAMSIE, author of Home Fire

A twenty-first century variation of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons... Taymour Soomro is a thrilling new addition to international literature

—— YIYUN LI, author of Must I Go

This haunted, haunting novel is about the cruelties we commit in our search for freedom and the bonds from which we can never be free. Taymour Soomro's piercing insight is that both the freedom and the bonds are constituent of love

—— Garth Greenwell, author of CLEANNESS and WHAT BELONGS TO YOU

A powerful, moving novel and an impressive debut

—— MOHSIN HAMID, author of Exit West

Spell-binding, like a song overheard in the night, one you follow like a map to the singer. Other Names For Love feels both new and ancient... A masterful debut

—— ALEXANDER CHEE, author of Queen of the Night

An elegant and affecting story about love... Other Names for Love probes the mystery of who we are by looking at the places (our homelands and wherever we flee to) and people (our parents and lovers) that forge us

—— RUMAAN ALAM, author of Leave the World Behind

A compact book bursting with emotion, it leaves you eager for whatever this already vastly accomplished author will do next

—— Daily Mail

[Soomro's] insights - into class, power, masculinity, desire, shame and filial duty - are fresh and nuanced... [he] is thrillingly attuned to the hum and growl of his characters' moods... Other Names for Love announces an author of great promise

—— Times Literary Supplement

Written in rich, measured prose, Other Names for Love is a novel about dynasties, desire, generational divides and the long reach of the past

—— attitude

[An] elegant and entrancing novel

—— Economist

Harris is a masterful storyteller. I’m currently experiencing that terrible phase of cold turkey after finishing something superb

—— Alastair Moffat , Herald

Contemporary echoes abound in this endlessly fascinating exploration of power struggles

—— Craig Brown , Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year

Triumphant

—— Sunday Times

A masterful story of political intrigue…a fascinating and absorbing novel

—— Financial Times

Robert Harris is an incomparable storyteller... It's a brutal tale of murder and mayhem and a tour de force of research and imagination...

—— The Express

I’m a big fan of Robert Harris so I’d like to read his latest, Dictator… Robert is very good at politics and evoking a period

—— Melvyn Bragg , Good Housekeeping, Books of the Year

Sinuous, clever and compelling…A fitting end to a magnificent trilogy

—— Metro

A riveting read

—— Sunday Express

Robert Harris brings his Cicero trilogy to a triumphant, compelling and deeply moving conclusion…The three novels are surely the finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language…distinguished by a mastery of the sources, sympathetic imagination, political intelligence and narrative skill

—— Yorkshire Post

Harris’ Cicero is a bit special – a mix of genius and craft, kindness and pomposity, ambition and principle

—— Daily Mail (Scotland)

Penetrating and utterly compelling

—— Claire Allfree , Metro, Books of the Year

In Dictator, Robert Harris brings his trilogy on Cicero to a triumphant end. As one who has himself written novels set in the last years of the Roman republic and the first century of empire, I am happy to say that Harris reigns supreme. His Cicero is magnificent; couldn’t conceivably be done better

—— Alan Massie , Spectator, Books of the Year

The characters are compelling and vividly drawn, the dialogue is profane and frequently hilarious; the prose drips like honey off a spoon.

—— SUNDAY TIMES

A jewel of a novel that will surely become a classic... enthralling and unmissable

—— DAILY EXPRESS, 'Fiction Highlights of 2022'

A celebration of love and loyalty among women.

—— IRISH INDEPENDENT

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this a gorgeous, life-enhancing read

—— IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY

It is a beaut. It's a celebration of women and of womanhood. I see my mother in this, I see my sister ... This book is a joy.

—— RYAN TUBRIDY

If language - lyric, lovely and funny, steeped in County Tipperary - and women (men come and go, rarely center a chapter and are often useless, sometimes cruel) are of no interest to you, The Queen of Dirt Island is not your next read. Ryan's book is a celebration, in an embroidered, unrestrained, joyful, aphoristic and sometimes profane style, of both ... The Queen of Dirt Island gives the women their due, and the reader is rewarded.

—— NEW YORK TIMES

Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island is a little Irish miracle ... there's as much implicit wisdom in these pages about how to live as how to write ... Ryan has his own emotional range and a way of capturing the largeness of what look like tiny lives but aren't

—— WASHINGTON POST

Frank, funny and emotional

—— Marie Claire

A fascinatingly realistic look into the world of elite sports where driven and flawed characters' private lives are just as intriguing and controversial as they are on the court

—— Business Post

This is a well-researched, exciting and genuinely tender book

—— RTÉ

McEwan is on top form… Social satire that wears its learning lightly

—— Lady, Book of the Year

[A] brilliant novel… A tour de force in language and literary intrigue.

—— Brad Davies , i, Book of the Year

A book pulsing with hilarious and brainy brio… He simultaneously spoofs crime fiction and finds a novel mouthpiece for a mordantly entertaining and exhilaratingly intelligent commentary on the modern world.

—— Peter Kemp , Sunday Times, Book of the Year

A comic tale… It is a masterpiece.

—— Fiona Wilson , The Times, Book of the Year

[A] wonderful new novel.

—— Catherine Nixey , The Times

By turns, funny, shocking and compelling. But the writing is so clever and beautiful. I could read it again and again.

—— Nick Clegg , Mail on Sunday

The voice of its narrator, a foetus, is splendidly sardonic.

—— Quentin Letts , Daily Mail, Book of the Year

Not only does he pull it off, he does so triumphantly, in the cleverest book I’ve read this year. It’s smart, dark and at times very funny.

—— Jonathan Pugh , Daily Mail, Book of the Year

A saucy, claustrophobic and darkly funny story which is all rather peculiar. Compulsive reading.

—— Henry Deedes , Daily Mail, Book of the Year

I devoured Ian McEwan’s latest very funny spin on Hamlet.

—— Sarah Crossan , Irish Times, Book of the Year

An ingenious rewrite of Hamlet as a murder story in which a foetus is detective and possible victim.

—— Mark Lawson , Guardian, Book of the Year

This is McEwan at his most playfully provocative.

—— Irish Independent, Book of the Year

A clever conceit, elegantly wrought, economically constructed.

—— Tablet, Book of the Year

A bewitching ode to humanity’s beauty, longing and selfishness.

—— Irish Mail on Sunday, Book of the Year

A gripping piece of fiction.

—— Accounting Web UK, Book of the Year

I was hooked from the first page.

—— David Murphy , Irish Independent, Book of the Year

[A] smart, eloquent novel.

—— World of Cruising, Book of the Year

A enthralling read from one of the world’s master storytellers.

—— Helen Brown , Absolutely London

McEwan delights with lyrical prose that is fittingly poetic.

—— Ed Butterfield , The Boar

[A] work which both fascinates and disturbs through its unique perspective on a malicious death… Every sentence is a joy to behold, a gift to the reader of delicately considered prose, and thoughtful observations… Alongside its edgy and entertaining narration, and perhaps in part because of it, the novel manages to challenge all preconceptions of the crime genre, upending the whodunit into an extraordinary will-they-do-it… By nature, Nutshell is a novel which perplexes, entertains, and moves the reader in equal turn, all with McEwan’s startling attention to detail, and luxuriant prose style. Read it for its peculiar narrator, read it for the rapidly-changing and intense emotions, or read it just for the thrill of chase as the killing comes to fruition; whatever intrigues you about this novel, just make sure that you do read it – and feel the thrill for yourself.

—— Eli Holden , Oxford Student

Brilliantly realised… Any book so bound up in a conceit and in its own verbal fireworks at times runs the risk of being a bit clever-clever. But on the whole we accept in a suspension of disbelief the foetus’s pompous mastery of language and imagery and abandon ourselves to the sheer eloquent pleasure of this hilarious romp.

—— Liza Cox , Totally Dublin

Short, odd but pleasurable… Great fun, and very well written.

—— i

Rich in Shakespearean allusion, this is McEwan on dazzling form.

—— Mail on Sunday

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers.

—— Silversurfers

Ian McEwan’s brilliance as a stylist and surprise plotter finds a fitting subject in Nutshell…, which is Hamlet as told from inside the womb. Up there with his best.

—— Melvyn Bragg , New Statesman

A gripping tale is told with breathtaking skill, turbocharged with rage against the madness and despair of our modern world.

—— Guto Harri , The Tablet

Nutshell is one of those books you sit down to read and don’t get up until you’ve finished. It is brilliantly executed and full of surprises; original, clever and witty. Simply a must-read

—— Kalwant Bhopal , Times Higher Education

A book I couldn’t put down… brilliantly clever

—— Nadav Kander , Observer
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