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Saad T. Farooqi

@saadtfarooqi

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Author of “White World”.
For events, appearances, and more, check out the website below 👇🏼
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I read the Bhagavad Gita in the mornings and White World at night this week, and I don't think Farooqi meant for those two books to end up in conversation with each other. They did anyway. Saad reached out to me directly to send this one. He's building a readership here from Canada, and after finishing it, I wanted to help. It's set in a scorched, segregated 2083 Pakistan, and it doesn't look away from what a state does to the people it's decided don't belong. Four stars. Unflinching, genuinely dark in places, worth sitting with. What's a book that ended up talking to something else you were reading at the same time, whether you meant it to or not? #OriginsOfWonder #SacredTexts #TheReviewReel #WhiteWorld #BookTok
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Friday Feels The trench floods with light before it floods with concrete. One more week of busted up ground, then the flooring gets smoothed, the shelves go up this weekend. Right now it's electricians and blueprints and a floor plan only I can picture as finished. @pageandparlour is coming together. In the middle of it, a book showed up. White World, sent directly by @saadtfarooqi, no publicist, no program. A writer in Canada who has, by his own account, found the American market a hard door to knock on. I'm partway through it, dystopian violence and all. No verdict yet. What's an author you found before anyone told you to? #FridayFeels #PageAndParlour #IndieAuthor #WhiteWorld #CurrentlyReading
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Back in early August I was fortunate enough to hold my own #booklaunch for my novel #underthefullandcrescentmoon #bookstagram Alhamdulillah.
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They say it takes a village to achieve something momentous, but the Drunk Fiction Extravaganza tonight at The Caledonian pub in Toronto was a veritable manifestation of Canada’s potent literary community coming together - all brought together not by a village per se - but instead the vision of a single villager - author Emily Weedon! Tonight’s celebration of two years of the wonderful reading series she has created with Drunk Fiction inspired a truly once in a lifetime gathering of authors reading, industry pros sharing what they know and some workshopping of key topics like how to do a great reading and tips on social media! We were thrilled to be on a panel on book publicity and the speed dating segments -and eventually we dug ourselves out from all that to bring you some photos of the end of the 5 hour (!) event. Antonio Michael Downing blew us away with a show stopping reading from his brilliant book Black Cherokee and Michael Redhill read us a side splitting (literally) new story about the air show in Toronto that none of us will forget soon, and Anuja Varghese brought the temperature and spice level up with a reading from her sultry A Kiss of Crimson Ash All this while Emily Weedon presided over the event like the best kind of boss. She passed up the chance to read herself in order to let others have the floor, but we got a photo of her with her own wonderfully saucy Hemo Sapiens! We were especially thrilled when Catherine Black accepted our invitation to read from her deliriously enjoyable Blessed Nowhere! A night to remember and savour for a long time to come - thank you to Emily for being the villager who can bring together a whole village for a #CanLit night like this one! Many thanks to @anotherstorybookshop for provided the pop up bookstore for this event - great shopping! #DrunkFiction #AuthorEvent #EmilyWeedon #ReadTheNorth #Bookstagram #Books #PonyJumpOnIt
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So many excellent people tonight at Drunk Fiction in Toronto. 🌃 Thank you to organizer Emily Weedon for pulling this show together! Thank you also to The Caledonian for the warm welcome and to a lovely audience of bookish souls. 📚: @emily.weedon.creates . . . #torontolife #torontowriters #bookish #torontoevents #fiction
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We have such admiration for author Emily Weedon. She not only has the time any energy to write terrific books (Vampire-lovers, you need to add Emily's fine Hemo Sapiens to your #TBR list) ... but she's also the creator of one of the most exciting monthly events in Canada's literary community - Drunk Fiction. This monthly Toronto reading series features authors doing readings from their works in the gloriously unfussy setting of @thecaledonian whisky bar. To celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of this much-loved literary event Emily has thrown a literary party - the likes of which Toronto has never seen. A unique gathering of authors - and publishing industry insiders - all gathered under the Drunk Fiction banner for one remarkable evening of readings, panels and support. Along with Drunk Fiction signature style readings from some of the finest writers working today , there's Publishing Panels with agents, publicists, publishers taking part in some panel discussions aimed at helping writers better manage their #authorlife. Panels include a session on authors managing social media effectively and a coaching segment for emerging writers to get tips and pointers on how to give memorable author readings! We were delighted to be asked to take part in the panels on book publicity and promotion where we will be joined by some of the finest book publicists working in Canada to share our collective insights on what it takes to get books noticed today (and hopefully swap a few stories and #cautionarytales from our time on the front lines of #bookpublicity). Scroll through this epic post for the full schedule. Tickets for the Drunk Fiction Extravaganza are still available at Eventbrite here - https://tinyurl.com/3rjrau5f Your ticket purchase not only helps defray some of the costs required for an individual author to put on an event of this magnitude - but ensures that Drunk Fiction continues to offer a completely organic and inspiring reading series for authors and readers alike to enjoy. Bonus - books for sale on site! Bring a tote! See you there! #DrunkFiction #AuthorEvent #BookPublishing #ReadTheNorth #TorontoAuthors #EmilyWeedon #SummerReading
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Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦✨ Looking to update your TBR with some incredible homegrown talent? From spine-chilling domestic noir to intense psychological suspense, Canadian authors truly know how to keep us turning the pages late into the night. 📖🔥 Here are the books featured in today’s reel to add to your reading list ASAP: 📕An Unthinkable Thing by @nicolejlundrigan Nicole Lundrigan – A dark psychological drama centered around a tragic family secret and so much more! 📕Never Coming Home by @hannahmarymckinnon Hannah Mary McKinnon – A wicked, fast-paced thriller about a husband whose plot to eliminate his wealthy wife goes dangerously sideways. 📕 White World by @saadtfarooqi Saad T. Farooqi – A gripping and intense post-apocalyptic survival story navigating a stark, war-torn landscape of Pakistan. 📕 The Hitchhikers by @chevystevens Chevy Stevens – An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a why you shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers 😅 📕 The Marrow Thieves by @_cherie_dimaline_ Cherie Dimaline – A haunting dystopian novel set in a future where Indigenous people are hunted for their dreams. 📕 Venom Lake by @emmawhitewrites Emma White – A twisty, tension-filled thriller packed with toxic friendships and hidden secrets by a lakeside cabin. 📕 Her Last Goodbye by @rickmofina Rick Mofina – A terrifying mystery following the sudden disappearance of a mother and the frantic search to find her. 📕Take Your Breath Away by @linwoodbarclay Linwood Barclay – An addictive thriller about a woman who vanishes without a trace, only to seemingly reappear six years later. QOTD: Who is your absolute favorite Canadian author? Drop your recommendations in the comments below! 👇 #CanadaDay #BookTok #CanadianAuthors #ThrillerBooks #TBRList
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For us, celebrating Canada means acknowledging the rich and complicated history of this country we call home. It means staying curious: not accepting status quo answers, especially when they seem products of convenience rather than thoughtful inquiry. It means realizing how lucky we are to be here, while still acknowledging there are histories with which to be reckoned and changes to be made on personal and systemic levels. It means thinking deeply and with compassion and engaging with others who do. It’s a quest, one that is enriched significantly by reading books by the outstanding literary artists working where we live. Of course, there is wonderful literature published everywhere in the world and by multinational presses—and we read that too—but Canadian published Canadian and Indigenous literature (that’s literature published by presses located in Canada, with every part of their production in Canada) remains a priority for us. This literature is breathtaking. It’s rangy. It entertains and delights, yes, and it also sweeps us away to other worlds and allows us to better examine our own. Canadian-owned publishers only made up 6.2% of the total market share of books sold in Canada last year. (BookNetCanada.ca). As readers, we believe we can do better than that. Many of these publishers are located in places you live, including Hamilton, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, Sudbury, and Moncton. Supporting our local economy makes us stronger, and less dependent on the fluctuations of international markets. There are so many excellent reasons to read more Canadian published literature. If you haven’t already, we invite you to join us here at River Street to be a part of the movement. 🍁 #canadaday #kanata #canadianliterature #indigenousliterature #ireadcanadian
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April 2026 Reading Wrap Up What a fantastic month for reading, and I’m happy to say that I wrapped up two doorstopper books this month. I completed a second read through of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The readalog with @100daysofdante started last August and finished on Easter weekend. I am so glad to have done a second read through because there's so much to absorb. If you’re interested in my reading process and the tools I used to help me make good sense of it, head over to my blog TrishTalksBooks.com and search “Dante” for the article. I also finished up a 7 week readalong with my Classics Readalong Group of The Count of Monte Cristo. What a blast! I really enjoyed it. (We’re reading Wuthering Heights in November, a readalong with a weekly online chat. DM me to join the chat group if you’re interested). I reread Anne of Green Gables for our #CanuckReads Book Club. I’d read it several times as a girl, and it was fascinating to revisit it as an adult. There were so many great books this month! I loved Nowhere by @jon_claytor_art (from @goose_lane), a horror graphic novel. White World by @saadtfarooqi (from @cormorantbooks) was an amazing dystopian novel with a Pakistani lens. Pillow Talks was a stigma-busting nonfiction anthology about sex, from @awfullyhilarious that was great to read. For #NationalPoetryMonth I ended up reading two poetry collections. #TinderSonnets was a challenging look at dating in mid-life, all in sonnet form (by @jenlg52) and We Survived Until We Could live by @uche_peter_umez was amazing and I’ll be reviewing it shortly. I was also so happy to attend the @writerstrust Conversations in Trust event in April in Vancouver. Visit their IG page for information on the upcoming events in Calgary, Winnipeg and Halifax. For May: Our Canuck Reads Book Club will be reading The Wayfinders, Wade Davis’ 2009 Massey Lectures series. If you live in the Vancouver area and would like to join us in person for the book club on Saturday May 30 at 11 am, DM me to get on my email list. I’m very much anticipating reading the latest by S.A. Corey called The Fury of Beasts; and Martha Wells' new Murderbot book System Decay. Happy reading!
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Give your mom a Cormorant title this Mother's Day! We've got you covered with book recommendations that mom will be sure to love ❤️📖 Be sure to find more titles on our website at the link in bio. #MothersDayBooks #MothersDay #MothersDayGifts #BookRecs
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Happy Independent Bookstore Day to the Bookshelf! Thanks for all the incredible support!
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White World by Saad T. Farooqi @cormorantbooks @saadtfarooqi My Quick Take: I loved this haunting dystopian novel, with its view from the lens of Pakistan. My thanks to the author for a gifted copy of the book! *** This was a fantastic novel, and another great example of the amazing writing that sometimes shows up on my doorstep unassumingly and then takes up a loud and welcome place in my brain for a while. This is a literary space that I like: a dystopian future, and a dark one at that. This novel is full of interwoven timelines and characters, propulsive and with a violent edge. Spanning the 2040s to 2080s, this is a time where “Allah has burned the sky away,” and a white ash falls continuously over a ruined and reshaped Pakistan. The catastrophic event is alluded to but never truly described…a nuclear war? The moon somehow damaged? Now there is New Pakistan, a bastion of the elites, and the Sectors fanning out, becoming more damaged and unsafe the farther out one gets. A peculiar brand of religious and cultural intolerance has taken hold, and citizens have to wear colours to indicate their status. The main characters at first are Avaan and Rahee, but other points of view weave in and out later in the novel. Farooqi’s writing is skilled and engaging, and I’d say his style reminded me just a bit of spec fic’s William Gibson; you need to pay attention and work a bit to put the pieces together. But come together they do, gradually. There’s a mix of harsh violence and tender compassion, a juxtaposition that I enjoyed. What I really liked, though, was the Pakistani lens. As a person of the West, I found it intriguing and valuable to read dystopia that takes place elsewhere (for me). The religious intolerances are the same but different, and the persecution of the queer community is again, the same but different, and it was these differences that set my brain to thinking about how culture shapes speculative fiction writing. I didn’t know that I was missing dystopia from other cultures until I read one. Pakistani-Canadian writer Farooqi has written an excellent novel, and I hope to read more work from him!
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