Sahar Rehan

Sahar Rehan reads out her winning entry ‘The Barren Lands’. Set in Pakistan’s Thar Desert, ‘The Barren Lands’ tells a story about a people’s morals as dry and arid as the place they live; about the insufferable cruelties inflicted on women and how the mistakes of men must be borne by women. Coupled with rich detail and nuanced observations of life in the desert, ‘The Barren Lands’ captured our attention from the very first sentence and maintained it through the length of the piece.