Urban Fox for The London Times:
Iqbal Ahmed sent his book proposal to three London literary agents and a dozen publishers. It was a brave thing for a recent Kashmiri immigrant to do. The London publishing scene is often thought of as one of the bastions of old-fashioned English privilege: a gentlemen’s club for insiders, where who you know counts for more than what you have to say. Whether or not that’s true, no one wanted Iqbal Ahmed’s book.
So he published it himself.
Sorrows of the Moon: A journey through London is short, elegant and sometimes darkly funny. Yet its focus on the pariah status and loneliness of immigrants makes unsettling reading for anyone who has always lived here.
More here.
