1. Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives is already being talked about as one of 2026’s most anticipated novels. What kind of storytelling is Mueenuddin best known for?

a) Experimental speculative fiction set in futuristic Pakistan

b) Interconnected stories examining class, power and feudal legacies

c) Crime fiction centred on urban Karachi

d) Political satire rooted in newsroom culture

2. Mohammad Hanif’s Rebel English Academy continues his long-standing interest in which recurring theme?

a) Romantic relationships across borders

b) The global art market and stolen heritage

c) Satire, wit and language

d) Mysticism and religious symbolism

3. Sarvat Hasin’s Strange Girls looks closely at girlhood, friendship and control within a tightly knit social world. What does the novel focus on and what gives it its edge?

a) A group of elite schoolgirls and the quiet rules that shape their lives and loyalties

b) A supernatural mystery set in a boarding school

c) A political uprising led by teenage activists

d) A romantic coming-of-age story set abroad

4. Awais Khan’s In the Shadows of Love, due in February 2026, continues the story from which earlier novel?

a) No Honour

b) Someone Like Her

c) The Darkening

d) In the Company of Strangers

Answers

1. The correct answer is b.

If you’ve read Daniyal Mueenuddin before, you know his strength lies in close observation. He writes about class and power through people rather than grand statements. His breakthrough book, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, traced lives shaped by feudal systems including servants, masters and peasants. Those stories showed how authority works in private spaces as much as public ones.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives stays in that territory. You can expect linked narratives that move between rural estates and urban centres, paying attention to who holds power and who pays the price for it. Mueenuddin focuses on ambition, decay and social inheritance without spelling everything out for you. That restraint is part of the appeal. This debut novel is a tale about how Pakistan still carries the weight of its past.

2. The correct answer is c.

Mohammad Hanif keeps coming back to language because it decides who gets ahead. In Rebel English Academy, English is not just a skill. It is access. It shapes ambition, confidence and class mobility. Hanif shows how control over English continues to mirror older power structures, even decades after colonial rule. Satire and wit are how he weaves a story, and you’ll recognise his approach if you’ve read his earlier work. He uses humour to make serious points without sounding preachy. Hanif’s comic genius will make you laugh out loud, but it will also sting.

This is an author who makes it clear that English is never neutral. It opens doors for some and shuts them for others. The novel keeps that argument front and centre and asks you to think about who gets heard and who does not. It also mirrors Pakistan’s complicated history, where power, politics and personal consequence remain tightly bound and stories still insist on being told.

3. The correct answer is a.

Strange Girls puts you inside a closed world where girlhood runs on rules you don’t always see. Expectations sit heavy. Hierarchies stay unspoken. Sarvat Hasin follows a group of young girls whose friendships feel intense and care comes with limits. Affection often asks for something in return.

The book keeps its focus on emotional pressure rather than big plot turns. Hasin shows how authority operates through peers, schools and social codes, shaping what happens, what is understood and what is never named. As individuals move from youth to adulthood, tension builds in small ways through silence and everyday exclusions that feel uncomfortably familiar. The novel doesn’t explain its characters away. It lets you sit with unease and think about how ideas of obedience, belonging and desirability take hold at an early age. Strange Girls treats girlhood as something that matters.

4. The correct answer is d.

In the Shadows of Love is the sequel to Awais Khan’s In the Company of Strangers. The novel returns to familiar emotional terrain while pushing the story forward. Khan stays focused on relationships shaped by displacement, memory and unspoken longing.

His writing keeps the scale intimate. He pays attention to how people carry history inside their personal lives and how desire collides with social expectation. The upcoming Pakistani edition also points to a larger shift. Local publishers are backing fiction that focuses on emotional complexity without losing cultural specificity. Khan’s work fits squarely into that space and shows how contemporary Pakistani novels are trusting readers to sit with subtle tension and unresolved feelings.