Q. Karachi comes across as a heady, rollercoaster ride to readers who aren’t familiar to the city; was this intentional?
A. I did want the manic nature and surreal normalcy of the city to come across, but it wasn’t entirely intentional, it’s also because of the kind of events and characters I’ve described. The protagonist, who is a journalist, obviously has a far different life than many other people in the book and in Karachi, as journalists anywhere else in the world do.

Models present creations by Pakistani designer Tapu Javeri on the last day of the Karachi Fashion Week on February 21, 2014. Pic/AFP