Talking With Boys

by Tayyba Kanwal

In a collection of linked tales filled with irony, humor, and magic, Talking with Boys introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in the Pakistani diaspora in Houston navigating crises of their own making and beyond their control.

Via generations and geographies, the stories expand from Houston into tales from the characters’ pasts in Dubai and Lahore. A community of Pakistani immigrants distract ICE with unlikely bait. A housekeeper in a Dubai mansion plots to liberate her fellow indentured workers. In Lahore, an empty nester finds herself bound by more than a jinxed bracelet. Throughout, Tayyba Kanwal’s remarkable characters navigate economic upheavals, political turmoil, and personal betrayals to pursue love, plot for survival, and play subtle power games to triumph against patriarchal forces of all genders.

Genres: Short Stories

186 pages, Paperback

Published January 6, 2026

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

PERFECT BOOK CLUB book! What a fantastic collection of short stories, with so many connections (some very subtle) between them, I finished it feeling like I’d been reading a lengthy family saga. Set between 1950 and 2020, and spread between Lahore, Dubai and Houston, TX, these stories take us deep into families, with often troubling beliefs and attitudes - particularly to how women must behave. But there are moments of just satisfaction, if not joy, and the last page is very much worth waiting for.

Also, the author Tayyba Kanwal visited our book club last night and talked so intelligently and informatively about how she wrote each story, and then developed the collection into the jigsaw of stories we’d all enjoyed so much. So if you have a book club, I really recommend this one - so much to talk about! And you might request an author visit too - even on zoom for those further afield.

[Lungstrum Smalls · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this beautiful collection of stories Kanwal weaves a tapestry of Pakistani life across different decades and continents. While the stories do connect--through characters and themes--I was astounded by the variety of moods that Kanwal presents. Talking with Boys is at turns devastating and humorous, magical and banal. I loved how each story captured, in its own way, the tensions between the individual and the collective that seem to be at the heart of every family and community. Kanwal is very perceptive to class divisions and the way that, even when they go unspoken, these inequalities spark small cruelties and jealousies. I think Kanwal's writing really shines when she writes about the plans--sometimes righteous and other times petty--that are hatched by people who've been ensnared by injustice. I loved all these stories, but my favorites are "A Legal Alien," "Huma and the Birds," "Little Mother," and "Telling Tales".

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a joy to have seen so many of these stories at every stage of their life! 🥲 a beautiful collection from a great friend!

[Scott Repass · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of clear, beautiful, thought-provoking stories.