Jan 9: Westland Books announces pre-orders for Maryam & Son, the powerful new novel by award-winning novelist Mirza Waheed, publishing under Westland’s Context imprint on 26 January 2026.
Maryam Ali, a school chef and widow, finds her son’s bed empty one morning. At her sisters’ insistence, she reports him missing, hoping the police will find him, bring him home. Instead, government officials arrive with news that Dil might be far from London and involved in something unthinkable. As the days pass and the waiting becomes intolerable, Maryam retreats into the past, seeking answers for the present. She finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Julian, the young family liaison officer assigned to her case a dangerous attraction
that forces her to navigate between desire and the knowledge that he represents the very forces that have her son in their sights. As bombs fall on Mosul, Maryam must confront the ultimate question: how does a mother grieve a child who may have done terrible things?
While headlines focus on the spectacle of war, Maryam & Son explores the profound psychological erosion of families left behind the mothers and sisters who must live in the burn hole created by a son’s alleged involvement in a distant conflict, enduring prejudice, suspicion, surveillance, and the unreliable nature of information in our times.
Commenting on his fourth novel Mirza Waheed said,
“I have spent much of the last five years in the company of Maryam and her sisters… I hope Maryam breaks some hearts and makes some laugh. I’m certain she will make some fall in love.”
Karthika VK, Publisher of Westland Books, said,
“Maryam & Son is a novel I have read and re-read, and each time discovered something new to respond to, viscerally. It’s taut and dark yet humorous, and draws the reader into an intimate encounter with grief and desire. We are delighted to publish the book at Westland as a lead title in Context.”
Maryam & Son is an incisive novel about motherhood, grief, surveillance, desire and one woman’s refusal to let the state rewrite her life story.
The book is now available for pre-order and will be published by Westland Books on 26th January 2026.
