Madeleine Feeny

Doctor in despair: Tell Her Everything, by Mirza Waheed, reviewed

A surgeon from Kashmir is tormented by the penal operations he once performed under Sharia law, such as amputations for robbery

Mirza Waheed. [Getty Images] 
issue 18 February 2023

‘No one dies without regrets,’ says Doctor Kaiser Shah in Mirza Waheed’s melancholy third novel, an exploration of guilt through the eyes of a doctor haunted by his past, which won the Hindu Prize for Fiction 2019 and was nominated for two further prizes in Asia.

While both Waheed’s previous novels – The Collaborator, a Guardian First Book Award finalist, and The Book of Gold Leaves – deal with the turbulent recent history of his homeland, Kashmir, Tell Her Everything tackles the moral cost of a professional choice that compromises personal ethics.

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