No honour by Awais Khan - A review
A stark, harrowing tale of love and resilience
In ‘No honour’ by Awais Khan, a young girl called Abida, I would hesitate to call her a woman at the start of, falls in love and defies the conventions of her small Pakistani village. Her decision to follow her heart rather than societal norms has devastating consequences for both herself and her family.
Escaping with her life, but at the loss of her family’s honour, Abida travels to Lahore with the man she planned to spend the rest of her time with, but through naivety, she finds cast adrift in a cruel new world.
Khan’s tale of love, family, and resilience shocked me from the beginning thanks to the raw brutality in which he tackles Pakistani culture and traditions and as the compelling story developed, I found myself pausing to inform myself of certain items or practices, some of which left me feeling unsettled (such as the practice of creating “Shah doli’s rats”) but as a reader I have to admit that a certain part of this was my ignorance, and judging the actions of others from my own privileged position. It is worth noting that the violence employed here is based on reality and when viewed objectively, the result is no worse than we read or see in Western fiction and society.
These differences, however, not only informed me but encouraged me to learn more about a foreign culture and to that extent ‘No Honour’ managed the perfect three of entertaining, informing and educating. Certainly no mean feat.
That said, one of Khan’s strength in the book is perhaps also its weakness. The stakes are continually raised, as the poor decisions and luck mount up, though, had the right decision been made, we would have had a much shorter and engaging read.
Khan’s writing elicited several emotional responses and really drew me in to a world I had never experienced, in terms of the culture and setting, and at its heart, in the simplest terms beneath the family exterior, if you look at the narrative, I think I could make a case for ‘No honour’ being a more engaging and brutal version of ‘Taken'.
Overall, ‘No honour’ was a compelling page turner, that surprised me with the cruelty of its antagonists and encouraged because of the grit and love displayed by others.
