On the show this week, I spoke to Nigar Alam about her stunning debut Novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, which I absolutely love. In this episode we talk all about Partition voices an d stories, Pakistan, class, identity, friendships, displacement and so much more.

Author Nigar Alam was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent her childhood in Turkey, Nigeria, Italy, Kenya, Indonesia and the United States. She currently lives in Minnesota and teaches at Anoka-Ramsey Community College.

“Under the Tamarind Tree” is Alam’s debut novel and is set in the seaside city of Karachi. 

The main character, a woman named Rozeena, opens the novel sitting on her veranda near a garden shaded by palm and Ashoka trees, where she receives a call from someone she knew in the past. 

The rest of the book fluctuates between a dual timeline and follows Rozeena and her friends in the decades after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.



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