Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

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Alys Binat has sworn never to marry—until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider.

A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more.

When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful—and single—entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal—and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance.

Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SONIAH KAMAL is the author of Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan, a postcolonial parallel retelling, which was a Financial Times Readers’ Best Book of the Year, shortlisted for the Townsend Award for Fiction, and is being adapted as a feature film. Soniah has been nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year for Literary Fiction and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Georgia Review, The Guardian, The Bitter Southerner, and more. Her essays have received critical acclaim and been shortlisted for several prizes, including Pushcart Prize nominations, and her short story “A Suitable Girl” was selected for the Best Asian Short Stories anthology. Soniah’s TEDx talk, “What Will People Say,” is about regrets and second chances. Soniah grew up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and England and resides in the United States.

PRAISE

“This inventive retelling of Pride and Prejudice charms.” — People

“As with Austen, whose books could be read as fun and simple romances or acerbic examinations of class and women's choices (and lack thereof), Kamal's Unmarriageable succeeds in being both a deliciously readable romantic comedy and a commentary on class in post-colonial, post-partition Pakistan, where the effects of the British Empire still reverberate... Both a fun, page-turning romp and a thought-provoking look at the class-obsessed strata of Pakistani society.” — NPR

DETAILS

Paperback | 384 pages