Tell Her Everything
2019 The Hindu Literary Prize Winner
Nominated for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019
Nominated for Tata Literature Live Book of the Year
The acclaimed and award-winning novel, Tell Her Everything, is a heartbreaking, brilliant, and emotionally absorbing novel about ethics, filial love, and the corrosive nature of complicity.
As he prepares for a visit from his estranged daughter, Dr K, a retired surgeon enjoying the comforts of retirement in London, rehearses the conversations he will have with her over the course of her visit. It’s been years since he has seen her. He spent much of his time polishing the confession he wants to make to her.
As her visit gets closer, he recalls the country, a prosperous oil monarchy, he left India for to make his home and career. A dream job, the hospital he worked was just a ten minute walk from home. He had access to a lifestyle that he would never have had back home. Money and success came quickly, but the price was steep and often unbearable, especially to a wife and daughter who watch him walk the perilous path of lifelong ambition.
TELL HER EVERYTHING is a tense, visceral and moving novel about a father’s love for his daughter and a medical professional gripping with remorse, shame and despair. Recalling the work of Ishiguro, Coatzee and Kafka, it asks: Where does one draw the line between empathy and sacrifice? Between integrity and survival. Between prosperity and love?
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What They Said
The Guardian
Waheed’s novels function a bit like the glass backing of a watch that allows you to glimpse inside its mechanics; only in this case, behind the crystal glass, you can see the cogs of his characters’ guilty consciences whirring. As we read about them in their studied transparency, we realise that these are consciences that might have been any of ours.
Citation for The Hindu Prize for Fiction
An extraordinary work of fiction whose complexity, depth, and narrative mastery would be hard to match in contemporary world literature . . . a compelling novel, both a narrative tour de force and an exploration of a profound existential and moral conundrum.
Chicago Review of Books
This thoughtful, grief-filled novel explores the nature of familial love and sacrifice in the pursuit of what one may believe is a better life.
Hari Kunzru
Waheed’s poised and melancholy novel takes us into the psyche of a man whose ethical compromises have subtly poisoned his life. One of the most moving stories I’ve read in recent times.
Kamila Shamie
It’s really quite extraordinary. The story of how small men become party to huge crimes is so important. This is a powerful, profound, and important novel. One that has really sunk into my imagination in a way that too little does these days.
The Hindu Literary Review
Waheed’s work comes at a time when we have pushed the bar lower and lower about what we can say and do with impunity. This is a simple yet powerful book in itself, but the rudderlessness of these times makes it resonate with an even deeper urgency.
Pankaj Mishra
An eloquent and powerful testament to the fragility of our moral codes- and especially resonant at a time when those codes are being violated like never before.
The Book Review
Tell Her Everything is never short of compelling; the novel raises moral and ethical questions. It is an engaging read that would appeal to a variety of readers, each for a different reason.
The Telegraph
Without compromising on the narrative style, Waheed sets out to tell a tale—one that is narrated by the protagonist, an Indian doctor named Kaiser Shah, to his daughter, Sara—of pain, distress and the involvement of ordinary people in State-sanctioned violence.
Open Magazine
The triumph of Tell Her Everything is that it slithers away from neat categories. It is a love story. But it is not just that. It is a thriller. But the big reveal is a series of smaller disclosures. It is a political novel. But it doesn’t deal with politics. It is a monologue. But it is also a conversation. It could be a memoir. But it is more of a confession.
Mint Lounge
Tell Her Everything tells the story of a doctor wracked by a guilty past; its plot raises a number of knotty moral questions about the nature and origins of evil.
Hindustan Times
Tell Her Everything is a sedate exploration of moral accountability, of the ethics and emotions of morality. It is a study of the interior life of a man tormented by his complicity.
Huffington Post India
Waheed illuminates the most difficult truth of all—the Indian quest to pull oneself up by the bootstraps is usually at the cost of participating in systems of exploitation.
India Today
Tell Her Everything, unlike Waheed’s two previous novels, has nothing to do with Kashmir, but reading it in the wake of Balakot, or more particularly the Indian media’s coverage of Balakot, it’s hard not to see how far collaboration can extend. And how we are all Dr K.
Select Press
The Moral Sacrifices of Love in “Tell Her Everything”
Farooq Chaudhry, The Chicago Review of Books
Tell Her Everything is a layered recital of intricately woven hauntings, decisions, and confessions.
Tell Her Everything by Mirza Waheed review – under the knife
Tanjil Rashid, The Guardian
The moral downfall of a surgeon who assists with hand amputations in a Gulf state is explored in a powerful tale of guilt and betrayal
12 Must-Read Books of February 2023
Editorial Staff, Chicago Review of Books
This thoughtful, grief-filled novel explores the nature of familial love and sacrifice in the pursuit of what one may believe is a better life.
Book Review: ‘Tell Her Everything’ by Mirza Waheed
Somak Ghoshal, Mint
The Kashmiri writer’s new novel tells the story of a doctor wracked by a guilty past
The plot raises a number of knotty moral questions about the nature and origins of evil
Mirza Waheed: The Writer of Small Things
Nandini Nair, Open Magazine
Mirza Waheed in his new novel excavates the grey area between complicity and consent while exploring the banality of evil
Book Review: Mirza Waheed’s ‘Tell Her Everything’ Is A Twist On The Indian Immigrant Success Story
Karthik Shankar, The Huffington Post
Waheed’s third novel shows that the Indian quest to pull oneself up by the bootstraps usually comes at the cost of participating in systems of exploitation.
Mirza Waheed on exploring intense father-daughter relationship in third book
Sneha Bhura, The Week Magazine
Mirza Waheed on exploring an intense father-daughter relationship in his third book
An old cabinet guarding Mirza Waheed’s treasures
Luis A Gómez, National Herald
Attestations, onions and true fictions from Kashmir
‘Tell Her Everything’ by Mirza Waheed: The life and times of Doctor K
Vaishna Roy, The Hindu
A meditation on moral choices that gains urgency in the context of the rudderless times we live in
'One Day, I Will Write About My Home, the Emerald City': Kashmir's Mirza Waheed
Azaan Javaid, The Wire
In an interview with ‘The Wire’, Waheed talks about his new book, the sensibilities of an author from a conflict region and pellet guns.
Mirza Waheed on the subjectivity of morals in his book Tell Her Everything
Shrestha Saha, The Telegraph
A doctor stands at the end phase of his life, writing to his daughter about his life of having strayed far away from his hippocratic oath, in Mirza Waheed’s novel Tell Her Everything. Nominated for 2019 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the book reads like a dramatic monologue of haunting proportions.
Mirza Waheed sheds light on the demons within
Taha Kehar, The Herald
Mirza Waheed’s latest novel, Tell Her Everything, disarms you with its first sentence: “I did it for money”. It is a confession that endears Dr K, the book’s guilt-addled narrator, to you by zeroing in on his mistakes that have tampered with the lives of the very people he wanted to protect.
In Mirza Waheed's Tell Her Everything, a doctor's filial love is pitted against 'morally exhausted' ambitions
Aishwarya Sahasrabudhe, First Post
Waheed’s novel, that appears to be the story of a strained father-daughter relationship also depicts at a more fundamental level the ‘moral exhaustion’ of one man, father, husband and doctor who discovers just how much he has corrupted his soul in chasing after his ambitions
‘Tell Her Everything’: Mirza Waheed’s new novel affirms that we are all many shades of grey
Sanjay Sipahimalani, Scroll.in
The author’s third novel is the digressive first-person account of a doctor reliving a difficult past.
My Choice of Best of 2019 Books: Nandini Nair
Nandini Nair, Open Magazine
Mirza Waheed’s Tell Her Everything is another novel that grapples with an unreliable narrator—and if we can believe what he is telling us. It has a simple but disconcerting premise: good people do evil acts. And evil is not always the act of a sledgehammer; instead it is more often than not the insidious, even routine, tightening of screws.
Review: Tell Her Everything by Mirza Waheed
Saudamini Jain, Hindustan Times
In Mirza Waheed’s new novel a physician grapples with dark memories and the guilt that overwhelms him
'I Am A Bit Of A Method Writer': Mirza Waheed Talks About His New Book, Writing And Kashmir
Adil Rashid, Outlook Magazine
Mirza Waheed’s new novel, Tell Her Everything was released in Delhi recently. Outlook caught up with the author to talk about his latest book, his life as a writer, Kashmir and other interesting stuff.
Tell Her Everything: A tragic immigrant tale
Smitha Verma, India Today
Tell Her Everything is the story of Dr Kaiser Shah, who migrated as a young married doctor first to London, and then to an unnamed country presumably in the Middle East where he spent many years as a “punishment surgeon”.
An ordinary man | Review
Shougat Dasgupta, India Today
In his new book, Tell Her Everything, author Mirza Waheed explores the complex nature of morality.
"You cannot escape violence when it’s all around you"
Aasim Akhtar, The News
Interview of Mirza Waheed