“A twenty-first century variation of Turgenev’s FATHERS AND SONS, OTHER NAMES FOR LOVE explores the age-old dilemma faced by all those whose childhood is defined, and whose future is decreed, by tradition: how to carve a space for one’s innermost self, how to love without turning oneself into love’s sacrifice, how to be courageous without losing one’s tenderness. A keen-eyed observer and a sensitive storyteller, Taymour Soomro is a thrilling new addition to international literature.”
—Yiyun Li, author of WHERE REASONS END AND MUST I GO


Taymour Soomro’s OTHER NAMES FOR LOVE is a charged, hypnotic debut novel about a boy’s life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story of fathers, sons, and the consequences of desire. This tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country’s troubled history is told with uncommon urgency and beauty.

Soomro will also discuss the anthology he co-edited: LETTERS TO A WRITER OF COLOR, a vital and fascinating new collection that examines the craft of writing through the lens of race and culture and asks us to think differently about how we read non-white, non-Western stories.

Soomro visits UNL as part of the Creative Writing Program of the English Department, and “50 Years of LGBTQ Studies at UNL.” He was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He read law at Cambridge University and Stanford Law School. He has worked as a corporate solicitor in London and Milan, a lecturer at a university in Karachi, an agricultural estate manager in rural Sindh and a publicist for a luxury fashion brand in London. His short story “Philosophy of the Foot” appeared in The New Yorker in January 2019.