An astonishing debut examining women’s lives in Pakistan and interrogating the burdens, and freedom, of love.

In twelve electric, potent stories, Mahreen Sohail explores the facets of women’s lives, as daughters, siblings, and mothers, in marriage, and alone. She writes of women who are fluent in the language of grief, but refuse to be confined by it; of lives that are full of desire and betrayal; of a world in which menace lurks just under the surface of the ordinary. Neighbors spy on each other; estranged families reunite at a funeral; schoolgirls are caught up in a murder. 

“A flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle in stories that are wonderful on sisterhood, on sex, on Pakistan, on coming of age. Small Scale Sinners offers the same thrill as celebrated first collections by Jamel Brinkley and Colin Barrett and Yoon Choi: the pleasure of watching a singular sensibility awaken to its own expression” (Garth Risk Hallberg, editor of The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, and author of City on Fire).