Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a restrained and incisive exploration of class, power, and moral compromise in contemporary Pakistan. Set around a declining feudal estate, the book traces the lives of servants and landowners bound together by dependence and inequality.
Mueenuddin’s prose is controlled and unsentimental, allowing psychological depth to emerge without overt judgment. His characters are shaped by desire, fear, and resignation, revealing how social hierarchies persist through habit and emotional loyalty as much as authority.
Quietly unsettling and thematically cohesive, This Is Where the Serpent Lives offers a nuanced portrait of postcolonial society and stands as a significant contribution to South Asian fiction in English.

'This Is Where the Serpent Lives' is a magnificent, sweeping novel about life in Pakistan between the 1950s and 2000s. The novel is essentially comprised of four interlinked novellas, following the lives of four men of different social standings: Yazid, an orphaned street boy who is quick to earn others' trust; Rustom, attempting to assert his authority on his family's land after returning from his studies in America; Rustom's cousin Hisham who looks back on his courtship of his wife Shahnaz; and Hisham and Shahnaz's favourite servant (and Yazid's protégé) Saqib who is determined to make something of his life.

Mueenuddin explores so much in the stories of these characters' lives: feudalism, inequality, changing social mores, loyalty, betrayal, corruption and violence. The longest - and most compelling - story is Saqib's, the last and by far the longest, but the earlier stories lay effective foundations for what Saqib experiences: his relationships with Hisham, Shahnaz and Yazid, and his hopes for the future. Its horrifying conclusion thus feels both devastating and grimly predictable. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this novel to review.

This is a special book and I wouldn't be surprised to see it on a lot of book award shortlists over the coming months.

It is in the form of 4 linked short stories (making it quite a long novel overall) which gives a no holds barred picture of life in Pakistan and the interactions of class, power, wealth and poverty that contiune through generations. It opens with one recurring character, Yazid, appearing as a small boy, abandoned in a Rawalpindi bazaar clutching a pair of plastic shoes. He is taken in by the owner of a tea stall where he lives until late adolescence when he has to leave.

The next story is in the countryside where a young man, Rustom, returns from the USA, hoping to introduce some of the gentler behaviours he has learnt oversees. But the embedded corruption makes this very difficult.

After this the author gives us an account of a marriage, where Yazid is now working as a chauffeur and is supporting and acting as mentor for a young boy from the local village, Saquib, who manages to become highly valued by their employers.

Saquib and Yazid's stories continue into the final, sometimes quite violent section, which I found difficult to read at times. Their stories prove how difficult it is to go beyond the accidents of birth that control their destinies.

I found the writing style generally gripping , though there are some parts when the story moves along slowly, deliberately I imagine, but I occasionally found it overlong and slow.

Overall all though I am very glad I read this book. Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a review copy.

Daniyal Mueenuddin is the Pulitzer Prize finalist behind In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a superb collection that marked him out as a writer to watch. This is Where the Serpent Lives is his first novel and is already highly anticipated.

This is a novel of stories too - Rawalpindi in the 1950s, before moving through decades. We meet a breadth of characters - Yazid, the entrepreneur, Zain the intellectual, amongst others - and Mueenuddin crafts each of them beautifully on the page. He draws Pakistan so clearly on the page you can smell it's streets, feel it's heat. There is a Dickensian feel to his work, but transplanted to the Pakistan cities and countryside. The story, though vast in its scope, is never less than engaging, is at times funny, and always making you want to read one.

I took my time with this one, treating each section as a new novella, which when grouped together formed a novel, and this approach allowed me to luxuriate in Mueenuddin's prose, in his Pakistan, and grow to love his characters and their world. This is a very fine novel, and already a potential standout for 2026.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin is a powerful, unsettling, and deeply absorbing book that examines class, power, and survival in contemporary Pakistan.

Moving between urban centres and rural farmland, the book captures the stark proximity of extreme wealth and extreme poverty in a society where social position often determines fate. Through a loosely interconnected structure, the lives of multiple characters are woven together across decades, revealing how violence, ambition, loyalty, and love operate within a rigid and corrupt feudal system.

Each section is narrated from a different perspective, gradually building a wider picture of a world shaped by caste, capital, and inherited power. Characters such as Yazid, Saqib, Hisham, and Shahnaz are complex and often deeply flawed, navigating moral compromises in order to survive or rise within systems designed to keep them in place. Ambition frequently clashes with ethics, and the consequences are often brutal.

The strength of this book lies in its scope and emotional depth. Mueenuddin illuminates both the insulated lives of wealthy landowners and the precarious existence of servants, drivers, and estate workers who live beneath them, often unseen and exploited. The contrast between Western education, privilege, and the medieval brutality of estate rule is striking and uncomfortable.

Some sections are stronger than others, but taken as a whole, the book is intricately constructed and richly detailed. It offers an unflinching portrayal of inequality and the human cost of entrenched social hierarchies, spanning fifty years of personal and political history.

This is a demanding but rewarding read, intimate in its character studies and epic in its ambition. It is elegiac, disturbing, and profoundly thought provoking, leaving a lasting impression long after the final page.

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