Under the Cover: Saad Omar Khan’s Drinking the Ocean

There’s never a single reason why someone decides to write a book, let alone try to publish one. Statistics work against you. Few people who start a manuscript finish it. Few people who finish a manuscript find a publisher. Why then attempt a task that’s become so daunting—and heartbreaking—in our current literary climate?

There were multiple reasons for wanting to write Drinking the Ocean. Beneath all of them was the need to document an emotionally difficult time in my life. I had no intention to write something fully autobiographical. In the process of writing, re-writing, and editing, the story became less strictly “true to life,” at least when it came to the narrative mirroring every factual detail of my personal history.

There were other motivations for wanting to write this novel. This story is, amongst other things, a study on how spiritual and romantic love often collide, and how religious and secular modes of living conflict. These were themes that had been with me long before I started Drinking the Ocean. Intertwining my past and these larger themes wasn’t a conscious decision. If anything, this combination was natural, an organic weaving of ideas and memories that often occurs through whatever semi-mystical process produces art.

As is true of most debuts, the road to publication was lengthy. The production of this novel mirrored the timespan of the narrative itself. I started writing the manuscript in 2007, shortly after the time period where Drinking the Ocean starts (in the mid-2000s). The first draft was finished in the mid-2010s (the same period where the story moves back and forth from). Editing and finding a place for the book took its own time, and its only through good fortune that my manuscript landed a home with my current publisher. I am at the point in my writing career where I am asked to speak to novice writers about my writing journey. In these discussions, I have learned to emphasize that literary success is as much a product of good timing as much as it is the result of talent and tenacity.

It’s only now with publication that I’ve been able to see how the story within Drinking the Ocean mimicked the process of its development. This novel deals with the vicissitudes of time, how it works for and against our need for happiness and connection, and how vital the idea of devotion is in our lives. What requires more devotion than the craft of writing? What art form doesn’t require time and good fortune to work in the artist’s favour to achieve success?

I find myself gratified not only by the fact that I can see my work in print, but that I can fulfill one of the original goals of starting this endeavour. Art is nothing if not a supreme act of validation, of one’s thoughts and the totality of one’s life. I started Drinking the Ocean as a form of documentation, in the hope that I could create some meaning out of an empty time in my life. The meaning that I find now isn’t merely the joy of seeing an artistic milestone reached. Sofi and Murad, the novel’s two principal characters, share my spiritual DNA. As their creator, I would hope that I’ve learned from them. Some authors see their creations in paternal terms. Far from being merely my literary “children,” I see them as beloved friends who have learned to exist with a certain amount of grace to serve as a balm for their turmoil. I find myself admiring them, for the purity of their spirits and for their capacity to feel deeply despite their hurt and disappointments. Had it been the case that Sofi and Murad were real, I wish I could speak to them and discover more of their open-hearted nature beyond what I had written of. Barring this impossible scenario, I have the next best thing: I can give them to the reader, to let them inside their stories, in the hope that the tenderness I have for them can blossom for others, too.

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Saad Omar Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea before immigrating to Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies (University of Toronto) where he was a finalist for the Random House Creative Writing Award (2010 and 2011) and for the Marina Nemat Award (2012). In 2019, he was longlisted for the Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications.

Photo credit Ramy Arida.