‘No one dies without regrets,’ says Doctor Kaiser Shah in Mirza Waheed’s melancholy third novel, an exploration of guilt through the eyes of a doctor haunted by his past, which won the Hindu Prize for Fiction 2019 and was nominated for two further prizes in Asia.
While both Waheed’s previous novels – The Collaborator, a Guardian First Book Award finalist, and The Book of Gold Leaves – deal with the turbulent recent history of his homeland, Kashmir, Tell Her Everything tackles the moral cost of a professional choice that compromises personal ethics.
Set between India, London and an unnamed oil monarchy, it tells the story of the regretful doctor, now retired in London and living in a luxurious Thameside flat. Desperate for absolution as death approaches, he imagines confessing everything to his estranged adult daughter Sara, who lives in America.
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