Events

   Set in Afghanistan in late 2002, No Space for Further Burials is a chilling indictment of the madness of war and our collective complicity in the perpetuation of violence.   The novel’s narrator, a U.S. army medical technician in Afghanistan helping “liberate” the country from the Taliban, has been captured by rebels and thrown into an asylum. The other inmates are a besieged gathering of society’s forgotten and unwanted refugees and derelicts, disabled and different, resilient and maddened, struggling to survive the lunacy raging outside the asylum compound.  Their collective tale becomes a powerful evocation of the country’s desolate history of plunder and war, waged by insiders and outsiders, all fueled by ideology, desperation, and greed.   Feryal Ali Gauhar studied political economy at McGill University, Montreal, and has worked as a filmmaker and broadcaster in Europe and the U.S. She has been imprisoned by two military regimes in Pakistan for her prodemocracy activism. In 1999, she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund; she currently lives in Lahore, Pakistan, with fourteen cats, three dogs, a turtle, and four donkeys.   “In No Space for Further Burials, Feryal Ali Gauhar has crafted a novel of unrelenting truth, held in transcendent prose and an exquisite grace. There is no easy redemption here, but there is light and more light.” – Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Song for Night   “Profoundly touching…Feryal Ali Gauhar questions us and forces us to face our responsibilities as universal citizens. In a mirror effect, she makes us see the image of a world that has become its own tormentor.” – Yasmina Khadra, author of The Swallows of Kabul