In the Company of Strangers

Lahore – a city of secretive glamour, whispering elites, and sordid affairs. A city brought to its knees by terrorism.Forty one-year old Mona has almost everything: money, friends, social status... everything except for freedom in the repressed Pakistani society. Languishing in her golden cage, she craves a sense of belonging... of love.Desperate for emotional release, she turns to an indulgent friend who introduces her to an alternate world of glitter, glamour, covert affairs and drugs. There she meets Ali, a physically and emotionally wounded man, years younger than her.Heady with love, she begins a delicate game of deceit that spirals out of control and threatens to shatter the deceptive facade of conservatism erected by Lahori society, and potentially destroy everything that Mona has ever held dear.Awais Khan currently lives in Pakistan. He is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University. He has studied Novel Writing and Editing at the prestigious Faber Academy in London. His work has appeared in the Missing Slate Magazine, MODE, Daily Times and Aleph Review. Awais is the Founder of the Writing Institute, the largest institute for Creative Writing in Pakistan and has been interviewed by several leading television channels about his work.