The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

‘A GLORIOUS NOVEL ABOUT A FORGOTTEN PLACE AND A PART OF OUR HISTORY THAT WE HARDLY EVER TALK ABOUT.’ – MOHAMMED HANIFNomi and Zee are Local Borns—their father a convict condemned by the British to the Andaman Islands, their mother shipped off with him. The islands are an inhospitable place, despite their surreal beauty. In this unreliable world, the children have their friend Aye, the pet hen Priya and the distracted love of their parents to shore them up from one day to the next. Meanwhile, within the walls of the prison, Prisoner 218 D wages a war on her jailers with only her body and her memory. 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.Ambitiously imagined and hauntingly alive, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali writes into being the interwoven stories of people caught in the vortex of history, powerless yet with powers of their own: of bravery and wonder, empathy and endurance.Uzma Aslam Khan’s extraordinary novel is an epic telling of a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the subcontinent.