The Clinging Thing

BY mUNIRA tABASSUM aHMED

Iqra would like to be a good daughter, a good sister, a good woman, a good mother.

It has been made clear to her that people owe their lives to one another - to the driver who slows to a stop when she notices a jaywalker, and the roller-coaster operator who spots an improperly fastened harness . . . and Iqra's mother, who raised her, and the mother before her, who tried to stop the blood.

After the loss of a pregnancy, Iqra returns to her mother's home in the place where she grew up. The past is porous, her recollections fail her, yet she is suffocating with memory.

A couple of hours out of the city, Seam River pulls Iqra back into a state of bewilderment. She revisits the stories of her parents and all the women before her, as dreams, memories, the uncertain and the impossible converge.

Penguin, 2026