We Are Not in Pakistan

A Quill & Quire Book of the Year

Ten years after her stunning debut, Shauna Singh Baldwin returns to Goose Lane with an outstanding new collection of ten stories. Migrating from Central America to the American South, from Metro Toronto to the Ukraine, this book features an unforgettable cast of characters. In the title story, 16-year-old Megan hates her Pakistani grandmother — until Grandma disappears. In the enchanting magical realism of “Naina,” an Indo-Canadian woman is pregnant with a baby girl who refuses to be born. “The View from the Mountain” introduces Wilson Gonzales, who makes friends with his new American boss, the aptly named Ted Grand. But following 9/11, Ted’s suspicions cloud his judgment and threaten his friendship with Wilson.

Each containing an entire world, these stories are marked by indelible images and unforgettable turns of phrase — hallmarks of Baldwin’s fictional world.

AUTHOR

Shauna Singh Baldwin

Shauna Singh Baldwin’s first novel, What the Body Remembers, was published in 1999 by Knopf Canada, Transworld UK, Doubleday USA, and (as an audiobook) by Goose Lane Editions. It received the 2000 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean region) and has been translated into fourteen languages. Her second novel The Tiger Claw was a finalist for Canada’s Giller Prize 2004. Shauna is the author of English Lessons and Other Stories and coauthor of A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America. Her awards include the 1995 Writer’s Union of Canada Award for short prose and the 1997 Canadian Literary Award. English Lessons received the 1996 Friends of American Writers Award.

A former radio producer and ecommerce consultant, her fiction and poems are widely published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, and India. She has served on several juries and teaches short courses in creative writing. Shauna holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. We Are Not in Pakistan: Stories was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2007. Shauna’s third novel, The Selector of Souls, was published by Knopf Canada in September 2012. Reviews, reading schedule, and interviews at: www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com.

Reviews

The ten stories in We Are Not in Pakistan illuminate a paradox: love and fear draw us together, yet drive us to extremes of separation. Sixteen-year-old Kathleen believes her family would be normal if not for her Pakistani grandmother. Olena, a Ukrainian woman living in Moscow, discovers that her husband’s new posting will draw her dangerously close to her disapproving mother-in-law. Fletcher, a Lhasa Apso, finds himself in the middle of a game between his mistress and her commitment-phobic boyfriend. Tania tries to transform herself from an exotic dancer into the wife her doctor husband wants. Opposites clash and realign until the very last story, when Dr. Karanbir Singh receives an e-mail from a young woman who professes to be the child of his 1980s green-card marriage.

Eliciting amusement, curiosity, and wonder mingled with sadness for a post-9/11 world, Shauna Singh Baldwin lures us toward the displaced men, women, and other animals who populate these stories. Along the way, she explores our complex human responses to technology, art, and, most of all, our fellow humans.

“Baldwin is … far more overtly political than most of Canada’s younger novelists, and she becomes more ambitious with every book. … Shakes up the prettiness of much of the Canlit landscape. It wants to be global, and in this it succeeds.”
– Globe and Mail

“Shauna Singh Baldwin is her own master.”
– Times (London)

“Baldwin displays an uncanny knack for getting under the reader’s skin and stirring a potent cocktail of empathy, sadness, pity and rage. She has a gift for dialogue — an almost musical ear. Her writing is so strong and so consistent that she’ll make you forget you’re reading. And that alone is worth the price of entry.”
– Montreal Gazette

“Shauna Singh Baldwin’s writing is, quite simply, brilliant.”
– Atlantic Books Today