Ali-Gauhar

Critically acclaimed author Feryal Ali-Gauhar’s UK debut An Abundance of Wild Roses is a novel that combines lyrical storytelling with urgent contemporary themes of gender violence, tradition and patriarchy

In the Black Mountains of Pakistan, the discovery of an unconscious, unknown man is the first stone in an avalanche of chaos. The head of the village is beset with problems - including the injured stranger - and failing to find his way out. His daughter receives a love letter and incurs her father’s wrath. A lame boy foretells disaster, but nobody is listening. Trapped in terrible danger, a wolf-dog is battling ice and death to save a soldier’s life. Beaten by her addict husband for bearing him only daughters, a woman is pregnant again - but can this child save her?

In a land woven with myth, chained with tradition and afflicted by war and the march of progress, the spirits of the mountains keep a baleful eye on the struggles of the villagers who scrape a living from the bodies of their wildlife. As the elements turn on the village, can humanity find a way to co-exist with nature that doesn’t destroy either of them?

Feryal Ali-Gauhar’s first novel The Scent of Wet Earth in August was a bestseller, her second novel No Space for Further Burials won the Patras Bokhari award and was translated into several European languages. Her third novel, An Abundance of Wild Roses, was written with the assistance of the Roger Deakin award for environmental activism. Ms. Ali-Gauhar has served as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Population Fund. She is an actor, film-maker, columnist, novelist, animal rights activist and currently serves as Advisor to the Government of Pakistan for the management of cultural heritage in areas where hydropower projects are being constructed.