• A new novel from an award-winning writer and poet.
• A moving tale about love, betrayal and belonging.
• A highly original tale that delicately deals with heavy themes
including identity, race, love and family.
• A beautifully written work that was shortlisted in manuscript
form for the SI Leeds Literary Prize.

‘The glow of my cigarette picks out a dark shape lying on the ground.
I bend down to take a closer look. It’s a dead sparrow. I wondered if
I had become that bird, disoriented and lost.’

Young, handsome and contemptuous of his father’s traditional
ways, PK Malik leaves Bombay to start a new life in America.
Stopping in Manchester to visit an old friend, he thinks he sees a
business opportunity, and decides to stay on. Now fifty-five, PK
has fallen out of love with life. His business is struggling and his
wife Geeta is lonely, pining for the India she’s left behind.
One day PK crosses the path of Esther, the wife of his business
competitor, and they launch into an affair conducted in shabby
hotel rooms, with the fear of discovery forever hanging in the air.
Still Lives is a tightly woven, haunting work that pulls apart the
threads of a family and plays with notions of identity.

Reshma Ruia is an award-winning author and poet. She has a PhD
and Master’s in Creative Writing from Manchester University, as well
as a Bachelor and Master’s from the London School of Economics.
Her first novel, Something Black in the Lentil Soup, was described
in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy’. She has
published a poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties,
and a short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness; her work
has appeared in international anthologies and journals, and she has
had work commissioned by the BBC. She is the co-founder of The
Whole Kahani – a writers’ collective of British South Asian writers.
Born in India and brought up in Rome, her writing explores the
preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging.