In Blood of Stone, Tariq Malik revisits Kotli, the 1,000-year-old city of his formative years in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Marked by the traumas of dislocation and migration, the city and its inhabitants share secrets and longings, chronicled and imagined by Malik as he gives voice to a personal history that precedes his experiences as an immigrant in Canada. As the inhabitants of Kotli are forced to branch out in search of home, their stories expand to encompass the diaspora of Malik’s fellow mohijar. Named for the earthy, familiar scent present after rainfall, Blood of Stone is a compelling, luminous celebration of people and place.

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For the past four decades, Vancouver-based author Tāriq Malik has worked across poetry, fiction, and visual arts, to distil immersive and compelling narratives that are always original and intriguing. He writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and of his place in its shadows. Born in Pakistani Punjab, he came reluctantly late to these shores. To get here, he first had to survive three wars, two migrations, and two decades in the Kuwaiti desert. He loves landscapes, bodies of living water large and small, and readers and listeners, and claims he writes so that he has something to read on Open Mike at the local Poet's Corner or on the hallowed grounds of public libraries. His first book, Exit Wounds, was published by Caitlin Press in 2022.

“At its heart, a sensorial feast, Blood of Stone, is a homage to Kotli Loharan.… The braiding of text and image in Blood of Stone situates thematic elements such as home, memory, loss, friendship, love, and mobility alongside the sensory.… For readers, particularly those from South Asia or the tropics, the pull into Malik’s world begins with the smell of warm earth and rain.… ‘Kotli Petrichor’ is peppered with images of relics of a bygone era for which there is a considerable longing.”

—Dr. Prabhjot Parmar, from the foreword to Blood of Stone