The Runaways ****
Fatima Bhutto, Viking, R290
From the daughter of Pakistani political martyr Murtaza Bhutto comes a timeous novel that seeks to explore why young people become jihadists.
Fatima Bhutto's titular characters find themselves in the Iraqi desert fighting for the Muslim brotherhood but the novel's beauty, and its power, lies in the stories of how they got there.
Sunny's Indian father moved to England to give his family a better life, but Sunny grapples with racism, sexuality and belonging.
Anita Rose lives in the slums of Karachi, where her mother is a masseuse for wealthy women and her revolutionary neighbour stokes her anger with radical poetry.
On the other side of Karachi lives sweet, privileged Monty, whose mother discards servants on a whim and whose father thinks him a coward. When their worlds collide, it makes for a vivid story of vulnerability and violence. Anna Stroud @annawriter_