What Remains After a Fire: Stories by Kanza Javed (Hardcover)

Fiction - Literary - Short Story Collection - World Literature - Pakistan

Published: 9/23/2025

A haunting, powerful collection of stories spanning modern-day Pakistan and the diaspora in the United States, from a sparkling new literary talent.

In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society. An addict teaches his young son to shoot feral dogs on the streets of Lahore. A Christian nurse gets drawn into a plan to trap the ghost of her patient’s former lover. A Pakistani student in a small Appalachian town grapples with a startling act of violence that shatters her illusions of safety and freedom. A lonely wife, trapped indoors by a harsh winter, becomes increasingly obsessed with a cloth worry doll left behind by a previous tenant.

Written with keen psychological insight and remarkable empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender, and religion as Javed deftly examines questions of identity and agency, belonging and loss. What Remains After a Fire is a moving portrayal of fiercely resilient characters who desire more than what their circumstances can offer them―and what these desires ultimately cost them.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Kanza Javed is a Pakistani author with an MFA from West Virginia University, where she received the Rebecca Mason Perry Award. She is also the winner of the 2020 Reynolds Price Prize for Fiction. Her writing has been published in the American Literary Review, Punch Magazine, Salamander, and Greensboro Review, among other publications.

An unflinching look at the lives of Pakistani women, both at home and in America...the tales they tell are heartbreaking, brimful of dark truths and pain.--Eithne Farry "Daily Mail"

Rare and wondrous. This is a collection where the dust and swirling clouds of an entire galaxy are distilled into the pages of short stories. Crafted and essential, these stories sing.--Kali Fajardo-Anstine, best-selling author of Sabrina & Corina and Woman of Light

What Remains After a Fire blazes with righteous indignation at the plight of its varied characters, victims of poverty, superstition, prejudice, and religious traditions in both Pakistan and America. With an unflinching but compassionate gaze, Kanza Javed crafts stories that are disturbing and heartbreaking. A wonderful debut collection that establishes Javed as a writer to watch.--Thrity Umrigar, best-selling author of The Space Between Us and Honor