In Plain Sight straddles ethnicity, religion, power and poverty in a historical lens told with compassion and frankness. Kat’s story is one of loneliness and longing, interwoven with bravery as she dismantles the rose-coloured image of Pakistan her mother left behind. Readers will wonder at the beauty, lament at the brutal lessons, celebrate her victories of persistence, rile against her misjudgements, and be devastated by her losses.
Kat, a young Australian woman has arrived in Pakistan in 1999, but her passport is stolen. James, an Australian diplomat, is sent to assist. She immediately dislikes his similarities to her father, a former ambassador, whom she blames for her mother’s disappearance and her own abandonment.
Kat is on a secret mission to uncover what happened to her mother, an anthropologist, who went missing a decade ago.
Set prior to 9/11, Kat encounters the world of the slums, honour violence, extreme poverty, and the spread of fundamentalism. Her search takes her to the old city of Peshawar on Afghanistan’s border, and the glacial mountain villages of Hunza, interwoven with the politics of the west, and of privilege, in the capital Islamabad.
Kat’s experiences shake the very foundations of her beliefs, as history marches in a dangerous new direction, with violence on the rise, just as James’s world turns upside down with Kat’s arrival.
In Plain Sight straddles ethnicity, religion, power and poverty in a historical lens told with compassion and frankness. Readers will wonder at the beauty, lament at the brutal lessons, celebrate her victories of persistence, rile against her misjudgements, and be devastated by her losses.
In Plain Sight is a poignant reminder of the human spirit, family, and the power of love against the overwhelming forces of history.
Reviews
It’s been a while since I read a novel cover-to-cover in a single sitting, but once I started, I simply couldn’t put it down. It spoke to me on so many levels. The detail of observations about the places, the light and textures. It was so deeply authentic, I felt myself taken back 25 years. So many memories of once-forgotten things. Like stepping into a time machine.
Pakistan was a beautiful, terrible paradox. All those dualities – the luxury and poverty, the generosity of the host to their guests and the casual barbarism to their own family, the light and the utter darkness, all captured in this stunning work.
There were passages that made my heart simply ache. There were others that just reignited the searing traumas of that time and that place and the helpless rage of the country and the induced crimes onto its own people.
It’s absolutely brilliant. A former Western diplomat, Pakistan 1999
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