July Sun: Stories

by Aamina Ahmad

The award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali paints a profound portrait of contemporary Pakistan.

In these seven searing, atmospheric stories, Aamina Ahmad finds a world of pathos in the tightest circumstances, from the fugitive intimacies of villages where nothing escapes notice to the crevices where city-dwellers seek refuge from urban striving and indifference. A man witnesses the last tender moment between two lovers before fate intervenes. A woman takes matters into her own hands in the face of an unexpected pregnancy. A young girl’s perception of her father is forever altered when she follows him to a secret meeting. A police officer must choose between the laws of God and man. Capturing the plight of ordinary people caught between love and duty, action and indecision, freedom and the constraints of tradition, July Sun more than sustains the promise of Ahmad’s exceptionally sure-footed debut.

Genres: Short Stories, Pakistan, Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 2026

About the author

Aamina Ahmad, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, The Southern Review, Ecotone, and elsewhere; she is also the author of a play, The Dishonored. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota.

Reviews

[Sam Hughes]

Stop it rn. I cannot breathe.

damnit! One of my most anticipated reads of 2026 just wrecked my soul and crushed my heart. What do you MEAN I was sobbing physically onto every page? Literally, tears have left their mark on the copy I was so graciously gifted by @riverheadbooks. I am eternally grateful, emotionally and otherwise, for the opportunity to read this book before June 30, 2026. I am now spiraling and further researching Pakistani culture and contemporary moments throughout this area, which I went in knowing very little about.

With each story, Aamina Ahmad took a dig at the most sensitive pieces of my soul, detailing narratives of motherhood, infertility, war, spiritualism, and loss under a blanket culture that I'm a stranger to, but share immense respect for.

Our author was careful and kind in her delivery of Pakistan's harsh realities for ways of life, and I will continue to patronize more research and fiction from this part of the country to further educate myself.

[Beth]

Thank you to Riverhead Books for this gifted physical ARC.

I really wish I had a better review for this one, unfortunately it was just a miss for me. This is a book of seven short stories that are set in Pakistan. The stories were meant to be impactful and emotional, the topics in them were heavy, but it didn't give me any emotional connections within the stories. If this hadn't been as short as it was I likely would have DNF'd.

The writing was just flat throughout these stories and the characters were flat in turn. I think the author was being too reliant on the topics/subjects of each story to carry the emotion and even though they were heavy it just had no emotional feeling. It just wasn't for me unfortunately.

*This ARC was given by Riverhead Books, all opinions are my own.*

[Alicia Garcia-Webster]

Sad. Not sad in the boo-hoo, tears-streaming-down-my-face kind of way, but just weighty, and heavy, and heavy sigh inducing. I have to be honest, I didn't find any of the stories to be compelling. I have a natural defense that goes up whenever there is a hint of self-pity or victimhood within a book's characters. Not that the characters can't be legitimate victims (as they sometimes are here), or deserving of pity (ditto), but it's the whinging for me. The wallowing. The marinating. So yes, the writing was fine, but the tales, themselves, were lackluster and uninspiring. **This ARC was provided free to me, but all opinions are my own.

[Zulekha Saqib]

— I think my enjoyment of this book was hampered by my expectations.

[Nabeeha Siddiqui]

Beautifully written. Immersive story telling that captured the essence of interpersonal conflicts often faced in South Asian culture.

[Meghana]

Felt a little lacking in depth, potentially because of a lack of familiarity on the ground.

[Claire]

I just could not get into this

[E K]

July Sun: Stories by Aamina Ahmad explores ordinary people navigating class, religion, and rigid societal expectations in Pakistan. Ahmad’s prose is elegant, delivering rich, atmospheric descriptions of both quiet villages and crowded cities. However, the collection frequently leaves the reader frustrated. The entries lean so heavily into ambiguity that they regularly feel unfinished, cutting off abruptly at the climax without providing satisfying resolution or narrative momentum. This repetitive pattern makes the reading experience feel disjointed and unfulfilling. While the character observations are precise, the lack of payoff leaves these stories feeling like scattered writing exercises rather than a cohesive work