A Girl Like That

Description

Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is many things: an Indian girl, a bright and vivacious student, an orphan, a troublemaker whose romantic entanglements are the subject of endless gossip among the girls in her school. "You don't want to get involved with a girl like that," they say. So how is it that Porus, a Parsi boy, has only ever had eyes for her? And how did Zarin and Porus end up dead in a car together, crashed on the side of the highway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? When the religious police arrive, everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is called into question.

Tanaz Bhathena was born in Mumbai and raised in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Toronto. She is the winner of the 2009 MARTY for Emerging Literary Arts, a semi-finalist for the 2013 Jeffrey Archer Short Story Challenge and the Readers' Choice pick for the 2015 U of T Magazine Short Story Contest. Her short stories have appeared in various journals, including Blackbird, Witness and Room Magazine. A Girl Like That is her first novel. Visit her at tanazbhathena.com.

Praise for A Girl Like That: Bhathena makes an impressive debut with this eye-opening novel about a free-spirited girl in present-day Saudi Arabia. . . . Bhathena's novel should spur heated discussions about sexist double standards and the ways societies restrict, control, and punish women and girls. --Publishers Weekly, starred review A powerful debut. --School Library Journal, starred review A fast-paced, fascinating read about a community rarely seen in young adult novels in the West. A refreshingly nuanced narrative about gender in the Middle East. --Kirkus Reviews "A Girl Like That is unlike any YA book I've ever read: a fascinating and disturbing glance into the gender discrimination and double-standards as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl in Saudi Arabia. It raised awareness for me, and is certain to inspire discussion and raise questions about equality, justice, and basic human rights." --Jodi Picoult, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of Small Great Things and Leaving Time "Tanaz Bhathena has a rare ability to take a setting that would be unfamiliar to many and make it so instantly and profoundly relatable. This is a shimmering, glowing, radiant novel." --Jeff Zentner, Morris Award-winning author of The Serpent King "Vivid, intricately woven, and wholly immersive, A Girl Like That is a debut that will leave you both haunted and hopeful. Tanaz Bhathena is masterful at writing complicated girls and the people in their orbits." --Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of Firsts "Masterfully constructed and gorgeously written, A Girl Like That is both a page-turner about a ferocious girl fighting the twisted expectations of both family and culture, and a thoughtful meditation on the pain that weighs us down, and the love that lifts us up." --Laura Ruby, Printz Award-winning author of Bone Gap