"I began envisioning a character who has no limits"
Dur e Aziz Amna’s A Splintering follows a woman who refuses to accept the life she has been given, even when pursuing something better comes at a considerable cost.
Tara begins in a rural Pakistani village, where she is trapped by poverty, domestic violence and the threat posed by her unpredictable brother.
Marriage offers an escape to the capital, but moving to the city only exposes her to a new world of wealth, privilege and social expectations that intensifies her ambitions.
As her desire for financial security and freedom develops into an obsession, Tara must confront the consequences of trying to sever herself from the circumstances that shaped her.
Set against political violence and natural disaster, the novel explores class, female agency, motherhood and the different forms of migration that can transform a person’s life.
In an interview with DESIblitz, Dur e Aziz Amna discusses the inspiration behind A Splintering, the complexities of creating Tara and how her own experiences of dislocation have influenced her writing.
From a Thought Experiment to A Splintering
Dur e Aziz Amna describes herself as a Pakistani writer whose work frequently examines “female agency and autonomy, dislocation, and language”.
Alongside her two award-winning novels, she has also written essays exploring the likes of culture, food, travel and family history.
These interests provide a broader context for A Splintering and the initial idea came unexpectedly while Amna was walking through New York with her husband.
The pair were passing the townhouses of the West Village, where open curtains offered glimpses of the interiors, including lamps and artwork.
She recalls: “I was walking in New York with my husband past these beautiful townhouses in the West Village, and the curtains were pulled back so we could see the lamps and the art on the walls.
“I said to my husband, what would I give for an apartment like that? And he asked back, well, what would you give?
“And we started a thought experiment of what our limits are.
“Through this, I began envisioning a character who has no limits, who really would stop at nothing to acquire wealth and power.”
This was the starting point for Tara, a character whose ambitions provide much of the novel’s tension.
Rather than beginning with an elaborate plot, the author first imagined someone willing to take the question of personal limits much further than she or her husband ever would.
Understanding Tara’s Ambition & Flaws
Tara is an ambitious and complicated protagonist, and Dur e Aziz Amna did not approach her with the intention of making her conventionally likeable.
Instead, the character arrived with a strong internal logic that allowed the author to understand her actions, even when those actions were difficult to accept.
Amna explains:
“Creating her was one of the easier things about writing the novel.”
“She is so completely different from me as a person, but somehow once she came to me, I fully understood her every impulse and reflex.”
Tara’s questionable decisions are not necessarily softened to make her more sympathetic, nor does Amna suggest that flawed behaviour needs to be justified for a character to feel real.
“I don’t know if I thought intentionally of keeping her human. To me, she’s human because I believe she is. We see deeply flawed people in real life all the time.”
This allows A Splintering to explore ambition and its consequences without reducing Tara to a simple moral archetype.
Her choices can be uncomfortable while still remaining recognisably human, reflecting Amna’s interest in the contradictions that exist within people rather than presenting characters as entirely good or bad.
Migration and Movement
Although A Splintering takes place entirely in Pakistan, Dur e Aziz Amna’s own experience of living between countries has influenced the way she approaches questions of movement and dislocation.
Originally from Rawalpindi and now based in the US, she brings an immigrant perspective to a story in which Tara herself never leaves Pakistan.
The author explains: “Even though A Splintering is set entirely in Pakistan, my experience as an immigrant undoubtedly shapes me as a writer.
“While Tara never leaves her country, she still moves from the village to the city, a form of migration that is less talked about, but far more prevalent.
“So I think I’m always thinking about various ways of dislocation and movement.”
That wider understanding of migration also connects A Splintering with the ideas that have appeared throughout Amna’s work.
Her first novel, American Fever, approached these ideas through a young woman who leaves home for another country.
Amna explains that the novel did not begin with a character or a conventional plot premise, but with an emotional state she wanted to capture.
She details: “It’s quite different with each project. Some projects start with a character, like A Splintering did, and then I had to think through the plot while I was writing the book.
“Other projects begin with certain settings, or a particular feeling one is trying to create.
“My first novel, for instance, is a coming-of-age story about a young woman who leaves home and moves to a new country.
“The novel began with an intense feeling of longing, and a lot of that book was an attempt to recreate and describe the longing I myself deeply felt as an immigrant.”
Award-winning Debut to Wider Readership
Dur e Aziz Amna’s career has developed significantly since the publication of American Fever, which won both the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the South Asia Book Award.
While recognition can be particularly meaningful for writers, she sees awards as providing something beyond professional validation:
“Awards are great for giving writers, famously low on self-esteem, the courage to keep doing the thing we desperately want to do.
“It’s always great to see that your work has been appreciated.”
The response to A Splintering has extended that sense of appreciation, as she continues:
“It has really been phenomenal. From the BBC Book Club pick to the Stanford Award to, most importantly, the reactions I receive from readers on a daily basis, it has been so rewarding to share this story, this character, that I’ve been thinking about on my own for so long, with others.”
That connection with readers has given the novel a life beyond the writing process itself, particularly after Amna spent so much time developing Tara and understanding the impulses that drive her.
Yet despite the attention surrounding A Splintering, Dur e Aziz Amna remains guarded about what might come next, as she concludes:
“I fear I’ve become too superstitious to talk about future projects.”
With A Splintering, Dur e Aziz Amna places an intensely personal story of ambition within the wider realities of class, gender and social mobility in Pakistan.
Tara’s journey from a rural village to the capital allows the novel to examine the freedoms that movement can offer and the expectations and inequalities that follow people into new environments.
Amna’s approach to Tara ensures that her difficult choices remain part of a more complicated portrait of a woman determined to gain control over her own life.
The novel’s strong reception has also brought Tara’s story to a growing readership.
Yet it is the ongoing response from readers that appears to have made the greatest impact, giving a character Dur e Aziz Amna spent so long imagining a life beyond the page.
