The sky has burned away and an ash-like snow covers everything. Beyond the tumult, there is a beautiful, safe, opulent land, walled away from the rabble. What does it take to escape a hell and get into that heaven?
This is the world to which Saad T. Farooqi brings us, his dark future, his White World. Farooqi takes us to a post-apocalyptic Pakistan, where a war is waging, democracy has fallen away and a brutal military dictatorship pushes an ethno-nationalist agenda. His characters navigate rigid social structures and the hazards of their birth and station, while facing a consortium of powers that control Old Pakistan, from the military to gangsters and hitmen.
White World feels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or the film The Book of Eli—a lone warrior’s journey through the post-apocalypse. The story flows with the feeling of role-playing videogame, with each character constantly itemizing bullets or food, always aware of their rank in the hierarchy around them.
Caught between several agendas, that of his boss, the military and the resistance, the principal character, Avaan, is on a personal quest of his own, seeking out his lost love, Doua. The story transitions from role-playing videogame to first-person shooter, bringing the ballistic energy of the John Wick films to each page. The tension and frenzy of the action sequences works partially because Farooqi keeps us so close to the narrator’s body. We follow Avaan, who, through a kind of death and rebirth in the post-apocalyptic world, has become a hitman for a ganglord controlling a territory within Old Pakistan. We feel his Colt .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, as though its weight and pressure were against our own midback. We feel his tension in the seconds before he must draw his gun faster than his opponents or die.
Told from multiple perspectives, we experience the aftermath of an apocalyptic disaster and the rise of the military-backed ethno-nationalist regime. The weight of military power combined with the pervading social authority of religion pushes down on the characters like gravity. Diversity of gender, sexuality and religion is made both unpatriotic and blasphemous. From Partition in 1947 and through Pakistan’s vacillations from democracy to military dictatorship and back, we see threads of history stretched into a post-apocalyptic future. Readers learn about Pakistani history, but also recognize the ethno-nationalist and authoritarian trends sweeping across the globe as the characters confront the enforcement of gender identities, rigid class hierarchies and religious supremacy.
White World makes the idea of the wandering hero in a dystopia feel fresh again. Farooqi creates a world that is fully wrought, his characters fleshed-out, and their desires nuanced yet genuine.
White World makes the idea of the wandering hero in a dystopia feel fresh again. Farooqi creates a world that is fully wrought, his characters fleshed-out, and their desires nuanced yet genuine. Books of this genre are often built in one of two ways: either from some lofty concept or from a grounded foundation. Farooqi’s debut novel is less a tale about a disaster and the dystopian aftermath, and more a story about survival and perseverance. It allows character development to take the story in interesting directions, without succumbing to genre formulas. White World’s blend of action, adventure, passion and compassion make it a gripping read.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Saad T. Farooqi moved to Pakistan before his first birthday. There, he survived three separate kidnapping attempts before he was eight. His family eventually settled in the United Arab Emirates. After initially enrolling in electrical engineering to please his parents, Saad graduated with a BA in English Literature from the American University of Sharjah. He then earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, London. Saad immigrated to Canada in 2015 and resides in London, Ontario. At Kingston University, he studied under several notable authors, including Rachel Cusk and Elif Safak. His short stories and poems have appeared in various magazines in the US, UK, and UAE.
Publisher: Cormorant Books (September 28, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 320 pages
ISBN: 9781770867451
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
- Jeff Dupuishttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jeff-dupuis/
- Jeff Dupuishttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jeff-dupuis/
- Jeff Dupuishttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jeff-dupuis/
- Jeff Dupuishttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jeff-dupuis/
- Jeff Dupuishttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jeff-dupuis/
