'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' MADELINE MILLER** SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023 ** CHOSEN AS A BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR BY THE GUARDIAN, BBC, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, IRISH TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES **Maryam and Zahra.In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome.Zahra and Maryam.In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it. Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision?'An epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer

Dealing with immigration, class, technology, betrayal, British Muslim identity - and above all, the profundity and conflict of female friendship - Best of Friends is at once a powerful state-of-the-nation novel, and a painfully intimate confrontation of the acts that unravel our public and private lives