Joseph, the tactician behind the Piccadilly Circus bombing, finds himself in a nursing home in Pierrefonds, Quebec. A visit from a long-lost former fellow cell member interrupts his dalliance with the night nurse, provoking both a crisis and a period of reflection. Did he lose his mind back then as a young man? Or is he losing it now? Why did a systems analyst living on the Kandahar Road in London, with a PhD from the London School of Economics and an enthusiasm for Bobby Darin's hit "Dream Lover" (the Farsi version), bring home fertilizer? Will his former associates give him up with deathbed confessions?

Julian Samuel, author of Passage to Lahore, is a filmmaker, writer, and artist who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1952, and has lived in the UK, Toronto, and Peterborough. His films include Black Skin; White Masks, Dictators, Resisting the Pharaohs, Red Star over the Western Press, and he is the co-author of The Raft of the Medusa: five voices on colonies, nations, and histories and author of Lone Ranger in Pakistan, a book of poetry. His articles and essays have appeared in Arab World Review, Canadian Literature, and FUSE, among others. He makes his home in Montreal, where he completed an MFA and has taught at Concordia University.

Julian Samuel's profile page

Praise for Passage to Lahore: One of the bravest pieces of writing to emerge from our carefully confused Canada. Samuel travels from Lahore to Montreal (and many points in-between) with the ease of an accredited nomad. In the doing, he stakes out a place for smart, wicked characters equally fluent in international politics and intellectual gossip. This book is unafraid of anger, unafraid of ideas, unafraid of speaking the wrong thing. Passage to Lahore marks Samuel as an important renegade voice within postcolonial fiction.--Cameron Bailey, artistic director, TIFF