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This is Where the Serpent Lives
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Description
Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving: a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature
Moving from Pakistan's sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station.
Daniyal Mueenuddin's This Is Where the Serpent Lives paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. Yazid rises from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster; Saqib, an errand boy, is eventually trusted to lead his boss's new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. Saqib's boss, the wealthy landowner Hisham, reminisces about meeting his wife while she was dating his brother while Gazala, a young teacher, falls for Saqib and his bold promises for their future before learning about his plans to skim money from the farm's profits.
In matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin's characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country.
Product details
| Published | 13 Jan 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Audiobook |
| Duration | 10 hours and 0 minutes |
| ISBN | 9781037204371 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Praise for Daniyal Mueenuddin: Probably the best fiction ever written in English about Pakistan, and one of the best to come out of south Asia in a very long time
William Dalrymple, Financial Times
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Each of the stories opens a door on to a life you had never expected, shines a light for a while and quietly closes the door again ... Mueenuddin writes with the freshness of an exile and the intimacy of an insider about Pakistani culture
Observer
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Intense with emotion ... So engrossing that there is a wrench when one ends and the next must begin
Sunday Times
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Marks the arrival of a highly sophisticated literary talent
Guardian
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In Other Rooms, Other Wonders may be fiction but it is of such an authentic stamp that it is history as well, more so by the day, and deserves to be read as such
The Times
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Mesmerising … In this labyrinth of power games and exploits, Mueenuddin inserts luminous glimmers of longing, loss and, most movingly, unfettered love
New York Times Book Review

















