Moth Smoke

The debut novel from the internationally bestselling author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

In contemporary Pakistan, Daru Shezad is fired from his banking job in Lahore and thus begins a decline that plummets him into a dangerous world of drugs and crime. Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia that are oft protrayed in the West.

This complex story established Mohsin Hamid as an internationally important writer of substance and imagination and the premier Pakistani author of our time, a promise he has amply fulfilled with each successive book. This debut novel, meanwhile, remains as compelling and deeply relevant to the moment as when it appeared more than a decade ago.