Story of a Widow

After the death of her husband, Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days—gardening, cooking, spending time with her neighbors and family in Karachi—is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and, at times, impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to reconsider her past with Akbar Ahmad, and envision the future she wishes to make with her new suitor. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something so new and essential, he also exposes her to the danger of transgressing old traditions.

The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society whose conventions constrain men and, particularly, women. Gently humorous, profoundly perceptive, and exceedingly clever in its cultural critique, The Story of a Widow is Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s modern answer to the Victorian novel.