Bina Shah

The Monsoon War revisits the futuristic country of Before She Sleeps, where government leaders maintain a stranglehold over women's freedom and reproductive lives. In a neglected southern province, a female armed resistance bands together as the Hamiyat, the protectors of those who are too weak to withstand. Now, they plan a courageous attack on the perpetrators of this regime that will free them from its tyranny forever. Alia Musa is the wife of three husbands in a remote mountain village of Dhofar. When her youngest child, Noor, discovers a group of women who have escaped the regime to take refuge on the mountain, Alia must leave her home, join the Hamiyat resistance, and find out just how far she is willing to go for the daughters she loves, the husband she adores, and the mountain that she calls home. As a promising young soldier in the Hamiyat, Katy Azadeh has found family and home in the resistance. Kidnapped during an unexpected skirmish and taken from the mountains, Katy is seduced by the ways of wealthy neighboring Eastern Semitia. Despite their veiled promises, Katy must find her way back to the Hamiyat to face the war that threatens their very existence. Commander Fatima Kara is a veteran of the Hamiyat, leading her women to protect the women of the mountain villages from the government agents and the abuses of polygamy. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from Eastern Semitia makes Fatima Kara gamble with the lives of her soldiers, to win the ultimate prize for them all—their freedom. The Monsoon War is a near-future resistance novel that harnesses the powerful metaphor of women’s bodies as the battleground on which the wars of the future will be played out.

In an unnamed Middle Eastern country, government leaders maintain a stranglehold over women’s lives and freedoms. But in a neglected southern province, a secret female resistance movement has been forming for years. Now, the Hamiyat are preparing for battle, as they plan a daring attack on the perpetrators of the central regime. Bina Shah’s widely acclaimed feminist dystopia Before She Sleeps described a futuristic dystopian world where technology and tyranny rob women of their freedom and reproductive rights. The Monsoon War is the story of three courageous women — a Wife, a Fighter and a Commander — and the ambitious gambit they enact in order to free their daughters from the regime’s grasp on their lives.

Following the US's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the scenes of chaos at Kabul Airport, we could be forgiven for thinking we're experiencing an 'end of empire' moment, that the US is entering a new, less belligerent era in its foreign policy, and that its tenure as self-appointed 'global policeman' is coming to an end. Before we get our hopes up though, it's wise to remember exactly what this policeman has done, for the world, and ask whether it's likely to change its behaviour after any one setback. After 75 years of war, occupation, and political interference - installing dictators, undermining local political movements, torturing enemies, and assisting in the arrest of opposition leaders (from OEcalan to Mandela) - the US military-industrial complex doesn't seem to know how to stop. This anthology explores the human cost of these many interventions onto foreign soil, with stories by writers from that soil - covering everything from torture in Abu Ghraib, to coups and counterrevolutionary wars in Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East. Alongside testimonies from expert historians and ground-breaking journalists, these stories present a history that too many of us in the West simply pretend never happened. This new anthology re-examines this history with stories that explore the human cost of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil. From nuclear testing in the Pacific, to human testing of CIA torture tactics, from coups in Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East; the atrocities that follow are often dismissed in history books as inevitable in the 'fog of war'. By presenting them from indigenous, grassroots perspectives, accompanied by afterwords by the historians that consulted on them, this book attempts to bring some clarity back to that history.

A hyper-realistic dystopian novel set in the future that portrays a society that has arisen from a world decimated by war in which a group of women, greatly outnumbered by men, revolt against being enslaved in multiple marriages. In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of South West Asia, gender selection, war and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and women must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible. Yet, there are women who resist, women who live in an underground collective and refuse to be part of the system. Secretly protected by the highest echelons of power, they emerge only at night, to provide to the rich and elite of Green City a type of commodity that nobody can buy: intimacy without sex. As it turns out, not even the most influential men can shield them from discovery and the dangers of ruthless punishment. This dystopian novel from one of Pakistan’s most talented writers is a modern-day parable, The Handmaid’s Tale about women’s lives in repressive Muslim countries everywhere. It takes the patriarchal practices of female seclusion and veiling, gender selection, and control over women’s bodies, amplifies and distorts them in a truly terrifying way to imagine a world of post-religious authoritarianism.

A hyper-realistic dystopian novel set in the future that portrays a society that has arisen from a world decimated by war in which a group of women, greatly outnumbered by men, revolt against being enslaved in multiple marriages. In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of South West Asia, gender selection, war and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and women must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible. Yet there are women who resist, women who live in an underground collective and refuse to be part of the system. Secretly protected by the highest echelons of power, they emerge only at night, to provide to the rich and elite of Green City a type of commodity that nobody can buy: intimacy without sex. As it turns out, not even the most influential men can shield them from discovery and the dangers of ruthless punishment. This dystopian novel from one of Pakistan’s most talented writers is a modern-day parable, The Handmaid’s Tale about women’s lives in repressive Muslim countries everywhere. It takes the patriarchal practices of female seclusion and veiling, gender selection, and control over women’s bodies, amplifies and distorts them in a truly terrifying way to imagine a world of post-religious authoritarianism.