Edgware Road

A wide-ranging novel about family and identity, from an award-winning historian.

1981: Khalid Quraishi feels like one of the lucky ones. Working in the glitzy West End by night and spending time with his beautiful wife and daughter by day, he’s a world away from the life he left behind in Karachi.

But Khalid likes to gamble – twenty pounds on the fruit machine here, a thousand on a sure-thing investment there. And now he’s chanced upon his biggest opportunity yet, it looks like he’ll finally have his big win…

2003: Alia Quraishi doesn’t really remember her dad. She hardly ever saw him after her parents got divorced – so when she received the news that he died in an alleged accident, she had no reason to believe otherwise.

But now that almost twenty years have passed, she has questions. And with no links to her father left in the UK, Alia knows that the only way to find answers is to visit his first home in Pakistan, and connect with a family that feel more like strangers.