The Wandering Falcon – Jamil Ahmad

The boy known as Tor Baz – the black falcon – wanders between tribes. He meets men who fight under different flags, and women who risk everything if they break their society’s code of honour. Where has he come from, and where will destiny take him?

Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Jamil Ahmad’s stunning debut takes us to the essence of human life in the forbidden areas where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet. Today, the ‘tribal areas’ are often spoken about as a remote region, a hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks and conflicts. In The Wandering Falcon, this highly  traditional, honour-bound culture is revealed from the inside for the first time as the author, with rare tenderness and affection, describes a world of custom and cruelty, of love and gentleness, of hardship and survival: a fragile, unforgiving world that is changing as modern forces make themselves known.