i seriously don't know what to to say about his book or how to rate it atm... i loved the first 40 percent of it oh so much but the rest of it has left me appalled and cocnfused of what to feel about all of it

rtc

The second novel of a Pakistan born and raised author now US based – it is already a Radio 2 Book Club pick and I would think has a very strong prospect of prize recognition in the year ahead – in particular for the 2026 Women’s Prize.

It is most notable for its first party narrator Tara – who establishes from the very first paragraph that she is “what some call an unrelatable character, and I have done something unthinkable” something with which we will “find it hard to empathise” – and an act which was a conscious and risk taking act to deal with the economic unfairness of life – not via some form of altruism or promotion of social justice for others, but to gain her own economic freedom.

The novel told when Tara is 35 and after the action (and their most drastic consequence has occurred) starts with her birth in a small rural village in Pakistan – the second youngest of four daughters (with one older brother – who from 17 gets increasingly arrogant and aggressive). Unlike her siblings Tara stays in school – at first at her mother’s insistence but increasingly Tara sees education as a potential escape route to her dream of a more independent, part Westernised life in the City (having visited Islamabad on an outing with her siblings) – a dream she fulfils when a village born now City dwelling family first ask for her (already promised) friend’s family for an arranged marriage.

There though, living with her in-laws, she eventually looks for greater independence and economic freedom– first by way of finding a job teaching at a prestigious school (which will also school her now two children for free) and then persuading her husband they should move closer to the City and have their own house. But even their her frustration remains – contrasting her own life (not helped by her husband’s lack of work ethic which causes him a series of sackings) with the huge richness of the parents at the school.

Around half way through the novel in despair at her husband’s latest sacking – Tara takes the more drastic action that the start of the novel has promised, one sure I think to divide opinion and from then on her money situation improves alongside the greater risks she is taking of eventual ruin (or something even more drastic at her brother’s hands).

All through the novel – we learn also of the differing fortunes and circumstances of her parents, siblings (particularly her small businessman brother) and in-laws which builds a really interesting picture of an evolving society.

At while at one the stage Tara says “I know that the aim of a successful life was to avoid history at all costs” – in practice the novel plays out explicitly against political events local (a number of attacks and incidents occur close to the family), regionally (particularly in Afghanistan) and globally – all of which do impinge on Tara’s life.

And the novel ends not perhaps on the note of justice or redemption some readers might prefer but on Tara’s final drastic.

A memorable protagonist which makes for a fascinating novel.

Wow. I did not expect all of the twists and turns in A Splintering. The protagonist, Tara, starts off as being very likeable but interestingly I found her less likeable the more her character developed as she spiralled away from what I felt was her original ambition and instead became very single-mindedly focused on one thing in particular and became far less relatable.

Dur e Aziz Amna has really played a wild card with the main character arc and whilst I did end up not quite strongly disliking Tara I really enjoyed the slow chipping away. It almost felt like the author playing with the reader and testing how far a character can go down a wrong path before losing the reader's support. The ending felt inevitable but also like a real point of no return where Tara became absolutely irredeemable for me.

I couldn't put this down and hope to read more by Dur e Aziz Amna very soon.

Pakistan writing at it's best. Thought provoking, mature, struggle 's ,lifestyle choices or not if you are female and male dominance at it's worst.

This is compelling reading, I literally could not put this book down. It really bought home in graphic detail the struggle of a family and it's beliefs. Can their ideals be changed? Prostitution forms not an ideal backdrop to their believes but needs must.

Excellent writing. Cannot wait for another by this author.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this book.

How far would you go before it’s too far.Once you have it all, will you still want more? Perhaps for many it’s never far enough.



At the outset we are told by Tara, the narrator, that she has done something unthinkable, but she requests that we listen to her story before making judgement.

Born into a generation of poverty in a small Pakistan village called Mazinagar. It is clear that Tara is not like her sisters who settle down into marriage and children. She is more aligned with her brother, Lateef, who despite having left school early has quickly established himself as a business owner. Their relationship is turbulent with the older sibling constantly threatening to withdraw her from school. His cruelty remains with her. Through the help of her mother, she manages to complete her studies before being married to a son of a wealthy family and moving to the city. Hamad, however, is placid and happy to do just enough to allow him a peaceful life. Tara on the other hand is resentful under the watchful and critical eye of his mother and quickly sets a plan to advance the couple. First, she fixes her ugly teeth and gets a teaching job which allows free education for their two children. The exposure to the middle classes sets her on a further mission. She desires to be one of them or at least have access to the power they have. Everything, however, has a price, and while she plays a risky game there is always something sinister lurking in the background.

The book challenges the notion of misogynism wrapped under the guise of honour which forces women into becoming secretive and manipulative in order to have a voice. At times you loath Tara for her brazen and cold behaviour while at other times you champion her.

Dur e Aziz Amna has a wonderful ability to bring both the village and city to the reader. Together we witness the development of the population and its precarious state. I was totally captivated and look forward to reading the next book.

Thank you NetGalley and Duckworth publishing for the opportunity to read this ahead of publication

What would you do to build the life you dreamed of? How far would you go? How much would you risk? And when it seems everything might come crashing down, what moves would you make? These are the questions explored in Dur e Aziz Amna’s sophomore book. The story telling is excellent and sucks you in from page one. Tara’s quest to escape her rural Pakistani village and become one of the better off residents of a city is one I think many of us can relate to, even her methods were a bit unorthodox. In telling Tara’s story, Dur e Aziz Amna also explores misogyny, class and caste, familial abuse, and more. If nothing else, this book makes one thing clear: following Amna’s journey as an author is going to be an absolute pleasure.

the character in this book was fierce. she was ready. she was determined.i could feel that coming off the page. it was so clear, so clear that this woman had steel. she wanted something. she needed something. her veins were fuelled with the guts, strength and want for it.
Tara wants to escape her life. she wants to escape the house,her family, the attitudes. she especially wants free of her brother and the shadow he inflicts upon her life, her soul.
and does she manage this. she does or so she thinks when she marries an accountant who takes her from her dust filled streets to the ones of the city. and there lies its owns problems. so once again Tara isn't happy. not at all. she wants more, she wants what she has witness other mother at the school gates. there dripping perfection of hair, clothes and auras.
Tara was such a glorious character to get to know and read about. she is herself and she is fierce with it. it felt like a privilege to read about such a woman. she was such a power. i might not like her in my own life, she might frighten me a bit of i might judge some of the ways she looks at things. but boy did she have my respect for her grit. and sometimes not quite respect but shock at what she does to get what she wants, what she thinks she deserves and whats she is going to do to get it.
i ate this book up like Tara did against everything in her way.
a stunning book. just wow. it was so different to things ive read in quite a while. and maybe that is my ignorance. but if all my stepping out of my norm books were like this then please bring me more!
this book was also so fierce in the problems woman face. in all angles and all works of life. and the shame or "anger" we call it when one woman tries to turn, veer, fight her way out of it only to be met with another struggle. a struggle thats not equal. ever. we find this woman harsh, sometimes "eek" at what she believes or does or wants to get free. free from what though....we all know what that really is. so maybe we should look upon her and think there is questions she is showing us and answering for us at the same time. and for that i couldn't find myself judging her or the other woman in this book. instead it felt powerful in all the right reason. but sad too, ad i know and fear it wont be seen as anything it should. to shine a light. to change. and so reading it was actually even more of a good read.

Wow! What a perfect title describing this book; couldn't have been beter! Through this book, we are indeed entering "A splintering" of the main character's struggles against family, power, ambitions, desires, status, as well as gender forces, societal issues and national and international problematics. It makes you reflect on what you desperately want in life, if all efforts are worth it and, if not, how to know when to stop. Original, well written and really captivating. I enjoyed this read! Thank you Duckworth Books | Duckworth for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This is strange book about wanting it, and then wanting to have it all. Tara is born into poverty in a Pakistan village called Mazinagar. She has three sisters and a brother, Lateef, who is the favoured son. Tara is determined to escape from the life which is planned for her - and she does.

She does this initially through education and then, deliberately, by agreeing to marry a man from the city rather than from her village. Hamad, the husband, is satisfied with life but Tara has plans to continue to better herself.

She has her teeth done, has two children, learns about life and manners from her mother-in-law, and finds a job - but she still isn't satisfied. She takes more steps, not only to become wealthy, but to be recognised as wealthy. It is almost an obsession and her behaviour goes beyond what might be considered normal as she pursues her dreams.

Her brother, Lateef, is equally ambitious and his development and increasing wealth and status parallels hers, although as a man he has all the advantages. Somehow she envies his rise.

By the end of the book, you realise just far she will go to achieve her dreams and yet you cannot help but sympathise with her predicament, and it's hard to make a moral judgement. Having followed her through the ups and downs of her battle to be rich, there's a kind of emptiness and a lack of morality in the ending of the book. Has it all been worth it you might ask? Tara would probably say yes!

Tara, the main character of this novel, is both likable and hateable throughout the book. I never truly knew what her next move would be, and was surprised at times. Reading about her childhood, culture, and family dynamics gave me a lot to ponder and grapple with. This story highlights issues related to class, religion, gender, and social “norms” that are repeatedly challenged as Tara’s character develops. Overall, I enjoyed the authors writing style and would consider reading more from her in the future. I read this book in a relatively short amount of time and found it engaging.

Tara is an intelligent girl, born in a village in Pakistan and will do anything to escape the village and her destiny. She is supported by her mother to get
In her family, she has an overbearing older brother, and sisters who will conform and resent Tara because she doesn't. Tara marries a man from a city, and moves, and takes every opportunity to improve the family's financial prospects, at the risk of serious consequences.
Tara isn't a particularly sympathetic character, but she is enterprising and brave, going against the expectations of her family and society.
Good

“I wonder where to start. As I tell you my story, will you find it hard to empathise? I am what some call an unrelatable character, and I have done something unthinkable. But I implore you to listen. As the storyteller, I need you on my side. And we know that a story is only as good as its beginning.”
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It is perhaps cliche to describe reading as an act of transportation to the land of enlightenment, and certainly not all books are particularly enlightening, or need to be enlightening. Occasionally however you come across a book that unveils one’s eyes to a world vastly different to my own. At the very least, ‘A splintering’ opens my ignorant eyes to a culture and world I knew very little about. Aziz Amna paints in detail the lives of Pakistani women, that one suspects this level of detail can only come through being a part of that culture.
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I have to say the writing in this is tight, simple and direct. It is probably the one thing that kept reading, alongside the heavily hinted twist in the book. One can guess fairly easily what that twist is. I started this with so much promise. The insight into village life of Pakistani women were thoroughly interesting, but it felt like the novel ran out of ground with Tara, the main protagonist who wants to escape the restrictive and poor former life.
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Despite the heavy foregrounding of the twist it somehow felt unbelievable. The second part felt less interesting, rushed and just a bit shallow. Even the first part, it was interesting, but it felt like Aziz Amna ran into a dead end and needed to think of an out for the character. The writing is taught and it is the only thing that kept me going through the book.
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An interesting read, but the content made this a distinctly average read. Still I’ll be interested to read her other novel ‘American fever’. A very grateful thank you to Duckworth publishing and netgalley for being the chief literary matchmaker.

This is a book about Tara’s aspirations, but it is also about the unsettling urban transformations in Pakistan in the last few decades. It explores urban and rural spaces, class anxieties and the persistent threat that shadows Pakistani women in every space they occupy, seeking to unravel their lives and negotiated freedoms.

Tara is written as a deliberately unlikeable character, yet her simmering rage is palpable. That rage is heightened by the shifting social and spatial landscapes that surround her. For readers impacted by and aware of these broader sociological changes in contemporary Pakistan, the novel’s setting is both resonant and compelling.

I hope this becomes an instant bestseller when it is published in September 2025, I loved this novel so much.

We follow Tara, a young woman in Mazinagar, a rural village in Pakistan in the 1990s, as she is the only girl in her family to go to school, her mother determined to let her get an education despite her older brother Lateef's opposition. She dreams of escaping the poverty of her upbringing, the shared bedroom with her sisters, the tedious daily chores of washing and feeding a family, the dust, and what she sees as backwards attitudes. On a day trip to Islamabad, she decides that moving to the big city will be her goal and she eventually does it, marrying a wealthy enough accountant and moving into his family home with her condescending step-mother. But Tara is never satisfied, and is soon hungry for more, observing with envy the mothers at the school gate, their perfect hair, their designer coat, their neat cashmere jumpers...

I loved Tara as a character - she is unlikeable, petty, convinced of her own superiority, resentful of everyone's good fortune, contemptuous towards her family and anyone she considers beneath her, greedy and ready to do anything... The first paragraph of the novel warns us that we may judge her for the awful things she has done, so part of the thrill of this book is reading to find out how awful exactly she gets. (Spoiler: Pretty awful!)

It's well written, kind of funny at times, a really fascinating novel about money and greed, which I highly recommend.

Thank you, NetGalley for letting me borrow an online ARC. I have been an Amna fan ever since I read her The American Fever, and couldn't wait to lay my hands on her latest book!

This book was, wow, it was something else! It is going to make me think for a long long time! Amna's analysis and portrayal of the longing and ambition in a woman is so raw and fresh and neutral - at no point does she villainize her clearly not-a-good-person heroine, but also she doesn't give in to glorifying her by using her circumstances as an excuse, either.
I loved the interactions between all the women in the book and the easy language that the author has used - not too exotic, not too western, just right!

I did feel like the ending was a bit abrupt - and a little too expected at the same time. What happens to Tara after the book ends is also what I will wonder about for a long time! May be that's the success of the book? I don't know- but I enjoyed reading this one!

Dur e Aziz Amna’s work stands out in the South Asian literary landscape because it is distinctly unsentimental. Her narrator in this novel is un-plagued by nostalgia, eager to leave her home behind for city life. She promised herself as a young girl to “find a way to join the beautiful, free people of the city” but whether this new life can really be beautiful or free is a central question the novel grapples with.

This is not a novel that concerns itself with the gilded end-product that the protagonist may or may not obtain but one that slices through the obsession of wanting more itself.

Tara’s internal world, pulsating and charged, is at odds with her steely, removed observations of the politics of the external world. While politics is an important aspect of this novel, Tara’s references to Pakistani and global current affairs are plain, almost without affect, as though she is rattling off everyday occurrences from a newspaper. Lines like “That September, the towers fell in America” or, simply, “America invaded Iraq” are matter-of-fact, direct. They contrast Tara’s language around her own desires, injecting urgency into what she wants and what she acts upon by distinguishing it from what merely happens around her.

There are things she can control and things she cannot control — and encountering a character who will do everything in their power to change the trajectory of their life is intoxicating.

Full review in Dawn.

Fantastic writing. It flows and flows, and engages, and makes you feel a wide range of emotions and thoughts.
Tara was an interesting, complex character who had good traits as well as flaws.
The themes were all timely, timeless and important.
4.5 stars

While this book was difficult to read at times, it was a real page turner for me.

I loved the main character and her zest for life despite the poor upbringing and horrible situations she found herself in. I’m not sure that the author was right in leading her into the world of prostitution.

Dur e Aziz Amna's "A Splintering" is a gritty and gripping account of ambition, class, and struggle for agency in Pakistan's countryside. Tara, living in a village racked by the "stink of dung and dust," is desperate to break free from her stagnation and the suffocating grasp of her brutal brother. Amna creates a visceral environment of political instability and natural catastrophe, reflecting the turmoil that rages within Tara.

The book is a searing study of class warfare, following Tara from her provincial upbrining to the city, torn between the needs of motherhood and her own ferocious drive. Tara is an extreme and unselfish heroine, with an insatiable appetite for more, prepared to risk everything to create a life on her own terms. Amna's prose is evocative and incisive, vividly bringing Tara's world and her dreams to life. "A Splintering" is a disturbing and completely engrossing tale, a testament to one woman's adamant resilience in the face of a society that constantly strives to enclose her.

When people in political debates criticise rampant inequality, opponents will often say that they are motivated by jealousy, as if that's a brilliant aha response, rather than an understandable reaction to injustice. Tara is, at different points in her life, eaten up with resentment at those around her who, undeservedly in her view, have much more than her.

Although she is not from the poorest of families in her village, and although her education and ambition take her to a middle-class marriage in the city, she still recognises that a woman of her background will not be able to progress on her merits and must find another path.

Tara is not interested in principles, though. She is scornful of her husband's political aspirations and concerned only with improving her own lot. There is something engaging about her frank self-interest and a horrific fascination in seeing just how far she will go.

Tara's own story is interwoven with the key political events of the period, particularly the Bhutto family, and the social and economic changes over the decades. It's written in a deceptively straightforward style, capturing the nuances of the characters as they - or Tara's perceptions of them - shift. But it is Tara herself, with her contradictions, her drive and her many flaws, who makes it such a thought-provoking read.