Forty, they say, is the new 30. For US-based Afghan activist and journalist Nemat Sadat, who launched his debut book in New Delhi on his 40th birthday, the celebration saw him dredging a story, which for long had been buried, only because nobody wanted to take onus for it. That Sadat became the first native from Afghanistan to come out as gay in 2013, was brave in itself. But, to write a novel, The Carpet Weaver (Penguin Random House), which at its heart is a "gay love story," but also offers us the complex and fragile mosaic behind the country's tragic fate, is a reflection of how Sadat's activism is as much literary, as it is political.

The day we called up Sadat, he was preparing for the big launch party in the capital, to be held later that evening. "Today is my birthday," he shares gleefully, over the phone. "I never imagined at any point in life that I would spend this day with people who I haven't met in person," adds Sadat, who is also a prominent activist, campaigning for LGBTQIA rights in Muslim communities worldwide. Sadat is referring to his literary agent, Kanishka Gupta, and the other Indian editors, who "released his novel to the world", when so many others had "turned him away".