*WINNER of the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction*An astonishing debut examining womens lives in Pakistan and interrogating the burdens, and freedom, of love.In twelve electric, potent stories, Mahreen Sohail explores the facets of womens lives, as daughters, siblings, and mothers, in marriage, and alone. She writes of women who are fluent in the language of grief, but refuse to be confined by it; of lives that are full of desire and betrayal; of a world in which menace lurks just under the surface of the ordinary. Neighbors spy on each other; estranged families reunite at a funeral; schoolgirls are caught up in a murder.A flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle in stories that are wonderful on sisterhood, on sex, on Pakistan, on coming of age.Small Scale Sinnersoffers the same thrill as celebrated first collections by Jamel Brinkley and Colin Barrett and Yoon Choi: the pleasure of watching a singular sensibility awaken to its own expression (Garth Risk Hallberg, editor ofThe Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, and author ofCity on Fire).
