Small Scale Sinners (Paperback)

Mahreen Sohail

ISBN 13: 9798985976915

Published by A Public Space, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. *WINNER of the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction*An astonishing debut examining womens lives in Pakistan and interrogating the burdens, and freedom, of love.In twelve electric, potent stories, Mahreen Sohail explores the facets of womens lives, as daughters, siblings, and mothers, in marriage, and alone. She writes of women who are fluent in the language of grief, but refuse to be confined by it; of lives that are full of desire and betrayal; of a world in which menace lurks just under the surface of the ordinary. Neighbors spy on each other; estranged families reunite at a funeral; schoolgirls are caught up in a murder. A flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle in stories that are wonderful on sisterhood, on sex, on Pakistan, on coming of age. Small Scale Sinners offers the same thrill as celebrated first collections by Jamel Brinkley and Colin Barrett and Yoon Choi: the pleasure of watching a singular sensibility awaken to its own expression (Garth Risk Hallberg, editor of The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, and author of City on Fire). Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9798985976915

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Small Scale Sinners (Paperback)
• Publisher: A Public Space
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798985976915
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

*WINNER of the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction*

An astonishing debut examining women’s lives in Pakistan and interrogating the burdens, and freedom, of love.

In twelve electric, potent stories, Mahreen Sohail explores the facets of women’s lives, as daughters, siblings, and mothers, in marriage, and alone. She writes of women who are fluent in the language of grief, but refuse to be confined by it; of lives that are full of desire and betrayal; of a world in which menace lurks just under the surface of the ordinary. Neighbors spy on each other; estranged families reunite at a funeral; schoolgirls are caught up in a murder. 

“A flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle in stories that are wonderful on sisterhood, on sex, on Pakistan, on coming of age. Small Scale Sinners offers the same thrill as celebrated first collections by Jamel Brinkley and Colin Barrett and Yoon Choi: the pleasure of watching a singular sensibility awaken to its own expression” (Garth Risk Hallberg, editor of The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, and author of City on Fire). 

About the Author

Mahreen Sohail was born in Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied as a Fulbright scholar; and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Kenyon Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology (XLII), and elsewhere. She lives in Washington DC.