Saleema Nawaz Books in Order

Seven stories and two novellas examine the ways race, gender, and sexuality shape personal experience. Nawaz follows intimate lives through difficult subjects, using vivid images and extended sentences to explore tensions often left unspoken.

After her sister Sadhana's sudden death, Beena revisits their orphaned adolescence above a Montreal bagel shop. Conflicting inheritances, pregnancy, illness, and diverging lives shape her search to understand their relationship and the circumstances of her sister's loss.

An unfolding pandemic links a New York first responder, a pregnant singer, and a novelist whose book resembles the crisis. Their interconnected stories explore family, responsibility, regret, and the possibilities of community during a shared catastrophe.