LIFE’S COMPLEXITIES THROUGH INNOCENT EYES: TALES FROM QABRISTAN IS A MUST-READ NOVEL OF 2025
ADVANCE PRAISE:
Tales from Qabristan—Sabin’s most painstakingly composed work so far, as sparkling as it is sensitive—is an elegiac journey, which we all have made, which we all will make, from ache and anguish to acceptance. And yet it is suffused with hope.
– Shashi Tharoor
‘At one level, Tales from Qabristan is a lurid and dispassionate telling of the tale of a Muslim boy trying to come to terms with himself and his different identities. It is the never-ending story of the ethos of manhood, fi guratively circumcised and curled up in a toxically patriarchal and hostile world. On passing the camoufl aged threshold, it reveals itself as a magnificent historical dome of the qabar of hopes and setbacks of people, where every effort to raise voices echoes with the never-ending cries of the dead—not only humans but things and emotions, desires and dreams.’
– K.R. Meera, author and journalist
‘A living, tropical novel where the soil and the senses discover a new language’
—Sumana Roy, poet and writer
In a small backwater village in Kerala, Farook prepares to bury his father in the qabristan behind the mosque. As the rituals proceed, he is filled with memories of his growing years. Memories of the village, of secret lives, sexual proclivities, superstitions—and above all, the slow decaying of his family.
Tales from Qabristan is a strikingly vivid portrayal of a boy trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around him, as he navigates failure, love, life and death. Its language often slipping into magical realism, traversing the realms of both fantasy and reality, the novel reminds us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them.
It is currently on pre-order and is scheduled to hit the stands by end January 2025.
