The Good Son

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the help of my editor, Marjorie Braman of Henry Holt, and of my agent, Simon Lipskar of Writers House, in the development of this novel. Novels are reputed to be the work of a single author, but what you have just read is a fourth draft, and whatever faults it retains, it is a lot better than the first three, the result of Marjorie’s and Simon’s careful reading and comments.

The real (as opposed to invented) poetry quoted in the novel are my own versions of translations from Pashto and Urdu originals derived from the following books:

The Poetry of Rahman Baba: Poet of the Pukhtuns by Robert Sampson and Momin Khan, University Book Agency, Peshawar, 2005, and The Golden Tradition: An Anthology of Urdu Poetry, edited by Ahmed Ali, Columbia University Press, New York, 1973.