I’m pleased to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for the incredibly powerful and moving No Honour by Awais Khan. Thank you to Anne Cater and Orenda Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this raw and brutally honest book.
About the book:
In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect.
And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves.
When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death.
Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore – only to disappear.
Jamil goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.
About the author:
Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University, and studied creative writing with Faber Academy.
His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim, and he now regularly appears on TV and radio.
Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world. He lives in Lahore and is currently working on his third novel.
Follow Awais on Twitter @AwaisKhanAuthor.
My Review:
No Honour by Awais Khan is an incredibly powerful and brutally honest book that pulls no punches from the very first pages. Often harrowing and devastatingly real, it portrays the shocking reality of life in a small Pakistani village where there are age old rules to live by and family honour to protect – especially if you are a woman or a girl.
Told with a raw intensity that takes your breath away, No Honour tells the story of sixteen year old Abida who would like nothing more than to make a home with the man she loves. But when the unthinkable happens, Abida faces certain, public death as punishment for bringing dishonour to her family. Aided by Jamil, her devoted father, she escapes to Lahore, where she disappears. Desperate to find her, Jamil travels to Lahore, where he encounters prejudices even more horrifying than the ones he’s left behind…
To say I loved this book would be an understatement. It is a brave and compelling story of courage and resilience that needed to be told. Awais Khan brings it vividly to life with the power and beauty of his writing, sweeping me away on a tsunami of emotion as Abida’s story slowly unfolded before me. But as hard as it is to read at times, No Honour is also a tale that is as inspiring and hopeful as it is heartbreaking.
Abida is a force to be reckoned with, this young girl, little more than a child herself, who suffers so much yet somehow still finds the strength to carry on in spite of it all. And then we have Jamil, a father who will do anything to help the daughter he loves, even if it goes against everything he has been brought up to believe. And it’s that love between a father and his daughter that touched me the most, giving me a warm and hopeful feeling amidst the horror and the heartbreak.
Scarily relevant to the times we’re living in today, No Honour is a powerful story that gives a voice to those women and girls who have lived (and died) in silence for far too long. It is a devastatingly honest and moving book that I know will stay with me for a long time to come.
A stunning book that I would highly recommend.
No Honour by Awais Khan is available to purchase now.
Check out what these other brilliant bloggers have to say about this book:
Cal Turner Reviews 
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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