In Exile

Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret Life

By: Sadiya Ansari

Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Sadiya Ansari

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Globe 100 Best Book of 2024!

The Hill Times 100 Best Book of 2024

In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations?

Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Sadiya Ansari (P)2026 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"In Exile is a remarkable act of both courage and compassion. Blending profound empathy and journalistic rigor, Ansari’s deft hands weave the fissures of family silence into an insightful portrait of a culture that belittles complex women into far smaller lives than they deserve. This book is an act of reclamation." — Tessa Hulls, Pulitzer Prize winning artist and author of Feeding Ghosts”

"[A] triumphant debut … insightful, surprising, and beautifully written." — Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“I am completely floored by this book … A high-wire act of boundless empathy and incisive investigation."—Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces”

“Astounding.” — Globe and Mail

“This biography is not about joyful memories nor a happy ending, but rather an acknowledgment of a woman’s past leading to a new generation’s healing and forgiveness in the present.” — BUST

"A thoughtful and informative memoir and familial investigation." — Kirkus

“[In Exile] brings the plight of women and refugee families into sharp, empathetic focus.” — Booklist

Seemed incomplete

The story didn’t seem fulfilling. Though it was beautifully written and narrated. But didn’t satisfy.

Fantastic

This was fantastic story from a young journalist learning about herself and her family as she discovers things she never knew about her grandmother. She painted her grandmother not as a hero nor a villain, but with a complexity that felt true to the time of partition and thereafter. These are the stories that are so easily lost with time.