‘The Valley of Unfinished Songs’: An uneven novel about the interior life of the Kashmiri people

For decades, fiction from Kashmir has struggled with a rather burdensome and perhaps impossible task of representing the Valley. Under the burden of macro-political maps of wars and geopolitical relations, the human story seems to have faded into the shadows. However, newer books are turning their focus to the “micro” story of the domestic life – the rattle of a home’s copper pots, the sad melody of a song sung in sleepless nights, and the cold and suffocating silence of the harsh winter months.

Umair Ahmed Khan’s debut novel, The Valley of Unfinished Songs, is one such attempt at interior writing. In this novel, a father’s death in Dal Lake and his son Kabir’s isolation in Mumbai are entwined. The story is set across Srinagar, Lahore, and Mumbai, telling stories of those who have found kinship after surviving violence.

The geology of grief

The novel’s deepest preoccupation lies in what I call the “geology of grief” – how grief doesn’t simply disappear but builds up layer after layer until the ground below one’s feet itself starts to feel unstable. The protagonist of the novel, Kabir, experiences the death of his wife and unborn child before the events of the narrative begin. Soon after, he meets Armaan, a child...

Read more