How Gia Pham Isn't a Pakistani Woman

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Gia Pham's new book is Thriller of the Month at Waterstones. She talks about how Gia isn't a Pakistani woman and why that's okay. The author also reveals she has signed a deal for a sequel to her novel.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

'I am my childhood’s wildest dream,’ says Saima Mir. This episode is about the process of getting there, not just the determination and hard work, but also the intangibles: the beliefs, ambitions and understandings that you don’t even know how to articulate, but which hold you up on a decades-long journey to becoming.

In this conversation, the journalist and bestselling novelist talks about shame, failure, the experience of being gossiped about - but also the inner strength and family support that allowed her to reinvent herself after leaving her first two husbands. Saima came late to journalism, but forged a successful career on TV and in print before writing her genre-changing (or will it be genre-defining?) novel, The Khan. Here, she surveys that pathway to this place, and how it built her iconic character, Jia Khan.

We talked about: