Dur e Aziz Amna's Desert Island Books
Including the book that fundamentally changed how she writes, and the book that made reading on the NY subway a complete embarrassment...
I am so far behind on my reading it’s not even funny. The last four books I’ve read have been unpublished manuscripts by the writer at whose home I’m currently staying, so I haven’t even been able to add them to my Goodreads list—quelle horreur. The likelihood of finishing my New York Times Top 100 Books of the 21st Century challenge by the time I turn 40 is looking increasingly slim, and my TBR pile is growing by the day. At the very top of that towering stack is American Fever by Dur e Aziz Amna, which I’ve been carrying around with dogged determination for the past six weeks.
From what I’ve read about it, American Fever is an unforgettable coming‑of‑age story about a teenage girl grappling with belonging and identity. Dur e Aziz is said to navigate the choppy waters of adolescence with blistering insight and humour, capturing the tension between longing for home and yearning to escape it. And just as soon as I finish penning this post, I’m going to settle in front of a fan with a cold glass of something non-alcoholic to see for myself if it dazzles as much as its reputation suggests—which I have no doubt it will—and to finally make a dent in that ever-growing TBR.
I try to write as much as I can without a paywall, but it does take time. If you’re enjoying this post, I’d be so grateful if you would consider buying me a coffee.
It was such a thrill to have Dur e Aziz take part in my Desert Island Books series and to learn more about the stories that have shaped her. From the book that fundamentally changed how she writes, to the book that made reading on the NY subway a complete embarrassment, read on to find out which eight books she’d take with her to the sandy shores of a desert island…
Nushkha haye Wafa (Prescriptions of Faith) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
This is the complete works of the beloved Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It’s the first poetry I seriously encountered, in any language, and it has left deep impressions on me. I have several of the poems memorized—memorizing and being able to recite and quote poetry off-the-cuff is a prized part of South Asian culture—but it would still be nice to have the entire book with me on the island.
The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
I know, I know. There are likely multiple people who already have it on their lists, but there’s a reason for it. I rarely go back to novels—always that nagging feeling that there is too much else to be read—but I go back to these books so often. They’ve fundamentally changed how I write, what I think the place of “women’s fiction” can be, and how history can be deftly portrayed inside fiction.
A Separation by Katie Kitamura
While Intimacies is the book that many readers of Kitamura know her for, it’s the sparse, taut prose of A Separation, sentences as stark as the sun-ravaged Greek countryside where the novel takes place, that has really stuck with me. I also think that on a desert island, you’d need some books akin to cotton in the summer—books that let your thoughts breathe in and out, books that leave space for your imagination to play. Kitamura’s books always allow for that.
Mirages of the Mind by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi, translated by Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad
It is hard not to wax poetic about Yousufi’s masterpiece, just as it is hard to categorize it. It’s not really a novel; in the book’s preface, Yousufi almost forbids the reader from using that label. Set during the Partition, the book details the journey of Basharat and his family as they leave India for Pakistan. Yousufi is a writer who can make you laugh and cry within the same sentence. The book is obtusely about the pain of Partition, of losing land and family and culture. At the same time, the characters that populate the book are so effortlessly hilarious, their anecdotes so digressive and funny, that I often must put the book down, just to get the laughing bout over with.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald’s novel turns 100 this year, and there are already several deep dives into its long-lasting legacy in American culture. I suppose that makes it a very basic choice, but in my defence, I came to the novel much later than many Americans do. The book is regularly assigned in American high schools, and I only arrived in the US for college. I randomly picked it up during freshman year, and its simple but very Anglophilic writing appealed greatly to me; I think Fitzgerald was of a generation of American writers that was desperately looking to England for inspiration, just like many postcolonial writers in Pakistan, where I grew up.
Of Cities and Women by Etel Adnan
Another writer that I came to later than I should have. When I read Adnan for the first time, it felt as if I suddenly had a voice in my head that I had been wishing for. This reflection on the various cities that have influenced Adnan—Beirut, San Francisco, and others—is ruminative and inspiring.
Collected Works of Jane Austen by Jane Austen
This is a bit of a cheat, isn’t it? One summer during high school, I got my hands on this thick volume at a local library and just inhaled it over the course of sticky nights and long, sweaty days. If I were to be on a desert island, I’d repeat that undertaking, which feels so quaint now—the time and attention needed to consecutively read all six novels by the same writer feels impossible to achieve in 2025.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
You’d need something very, very funny for the desert island, am I right? I picked up this book when Beatty became the first American to win The Booker Prize in 2015, but I was not prepared for how it would make reading on the NY subway an absolute embarrassment. Reading Beatty, I shook, snorted, and sometimes outright cackled all over the R/W line.
I just loved Beatty's book too.