By Uzma Aslam Khan
Winner: 2023 Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
A New York Times' pick for “Best Historical Fiction 2022”
A New York Times' pick for “Books for Summer 2022”
Set in the Andaman Islands over the course of oppressive imperial regimes, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is a complex, gripping homage to those omitted from the collective memory.
Publication Date: May 17th, 2022
Hardback: 9781646051649
Paperback: 9781646054381
eBook: 9781646051656
Available in paperback: July 21st, 2026
Description
The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is a lyrical, gripping homage to those omitted from the collective memory.
Nomi and Zee are Local Borns—their father a convict condemned by the British to the Andaman Islands, their mother shipped off with him. When war descends upon this overlooked outpost of Empire, the British are forced out and the Japanese move in. The islands—and the seas surrounding them—become a battlefield, resulting in tragedy for some and a brittle kind of freedom for others, who find themselves increasingly entangled in a mesh of alliances and betrayals.
Ambitiously imagined and hauntingly alive, Uzma Aslam Khanwrites into being the interwoven stories of people caught in the vortex of colonial collision, powerless save for their own bravery and empathy. The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is an epic telling of a largely forgotten chapter in history.
Biographical Information
Uzma Aslam Khan is the award-winning author of five novels translated worldwide to critical acclaim. These include Trespassing, recipient of a Commonwealth Prize nomination in 2003; The Geometry of God, a Kirkus Reviews' Best Book of 2009; Thinner Than Skin, nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and winner of the French Embassy Prize for Best Fiction at the Karachi Literature Festival 2014. Khan’s fifth novel, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, won the Karachi Literature Festival-Getz Pharma Fiction Prize and the UBL Literary Awards English Language Fiction category in Pakistan, and in India was shortlisted for the TATA Literature Live! Best Book of the Year, Fiction. The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali was a New York Times' pick for "Best Historical Fiction 2022" and “Books for Summer 2022.” It won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction. Born and raised primarily in Pakistan, Khan has also lived in the Philippines, Japan, England, Morocco, and Oceania. She currently makes a home in western Massachusetts.
Reviews
Winner: 2023 Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
A New York Times' pick for “Best Historical Fiction 2022”
A New York Times' pick for “Books for Summer 2022”
“A miraculous performance . . . Khan's suspenseful, thought-provoking narrative is a challenge to simple assumptions about enemies and friends, loyalty and betrayal.” —Alida Becker, The New York Times
“Deeply researched and beautifully written.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Khan engages readers with a confident style and seamless storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly
“As affecting as it is intellectually powerful, the novel is a master lesson in the art of historical fiction.” —Pankaj Mishra
“A glorious novel about a forgotten place and a part of our history that we hardly ever talk about.” —Mohammed Hanif
“With piercingly lucid attention, [Khan] has drawn an intricate spider’s web that is both a record and a refuge . . . the tenderness with which [she] writes is a kind of intervention of knowing that is in opposition to the colonial one.” —Aracelis Girmay, Los Angeles Review of Books
“(A) lyrical novel . . . The past isn’t ever dead and politics with distinct contemporary echoes suffuses the novel . . . The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali has the additional virtue of being written by a South Asian author who tells the story mostly through the eyes of ordinary people, especially in her focus on entirely powerless adolescents, rather than their political and social masters. It is also a story of how hope and even dreams can adapt to just about anything.” —Asian Review of Books
“For every historical outrage eventually there comes along a work of fiction that does it justice . . . miraculously [lifting] the mists of collective forgetfulness. The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali performs that vital and welcome miracle. Voices from the past have been successfully captured and amplified by this remarkable novel . . . [with a] dream-like quality to the beautiful prose.” —Osama Siddique, The Herald and Scroll
“One of the best works of historical fiction I have ever read . . . [illuminating] a very little-known aspect of a period in time that has been otherwise extensively written about. It is an ode to the complexity and interconnectedness of human history and to the redeeming power of kindness and compassion, even in the midst of the most relentless of tragedies.” —Book Riot
“Part of the beauty of Khan’s writing stems from the fact that she does not need to actively portray racism, she makes virtually all her characters live it . . . Khan writes with quietly restrained but powerful passion.” —Dawn
“Khan is adept at creating worlds that are at once magical and terrifying. She creates a universe out of a footnote of history.” —Indian Express
“A consummate storyteller, [Khan] keeps the readers engrossed till the end . . . It is one story that you should not miss.” —The Tribune
“This fiction is the new truth we need to know.” —New Indian Express