burning mirror
reviews

The List magazine recommended The Burning Mirror with four star points
"Suhayl Saadi's debut collection of short stories is a small treasure. His is such a unique voice in Scottish literature it is impossible not to get swept up in his many experiments with form and content.

The first story sets the tone; Ninety-Nine Kiss-o-grams sees a young lad from Govan investigating the land inheritance his Pakistani grandfather has left in his homeland. Heartbreaking without once being sentimental, that Scottish/Asian musical rhythm rings through in every line. From here things just get better, particularly The Queens of Govan (which is like vintage Kelman), Rabia and the swaggering gall of Killing God.

Funny, clever and complex, his Scots Asian voice is very fresh, and reminiscent of masters like Salamn Rushdie and Alan Warner and, on this evidence, Sadi may soon be at the point of having few contemporary rivals.

Tricky and challenging but full of wit and repressed wisdom."
Paul Dale, The List magazine

David Robinson, Literary Editor of The Scotsman, did a feature review of The Burning Mirror. Here's an extract:

"The stories… are similarly eclectic in theme, from a harassed woman in a Govan kebab shop to the mind of an 8,000-year-old genie, a wartime Bosnian love story to one about bonded workers in a Pakistani brick-making village…

Determined to avoid restricting his fiction to purely Scottish Asian themes, Saadi's work draws deeply on the mythic - although for him the kind of films and song lyrics that sink into deep memory count for just as much as, say, the mediated Celtic myths that seep into at least four stories of The Burning Mirror…

The vibrancy of Saadi's writing is itself a burning mirror to that of Scottish writing as a whole."
David Robinson, The Scotsman

And this, from Eastern Eye newspaper:

"The author skilfully takes the reader on a magic carpet that touches down in unlikely places, touching subjects that you wouldn't think of - a perfect example being a love story set during the Balkans War. Saadi's writing is like a simple key that unlocks a Pandora's box with stories that are surreal and simple standing side-by-side. If… there were less slang in some of the stories, this would have been one of the books of the year."
Asjad Nazir, Eastern Eye

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