This Is Where the Serpent Lives

Bloomsbury presents This is Where the Serpent Lives written and read by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving: a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature

Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station.

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. Yazid rises from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster; Saqib, an errand boy, is eventually trusted to lead his boss’s new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. Saqib’s boss, the wealthy landowner Hisham, reminisces about meeting his wife while she was dating his brother while Gazala, a young teacher, falls for Saqib and his bold promises for their future before learning about his plans to skim money from the farm’s profits.

In matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country.

©2026 Daniyal Mueenuddin (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

Daniyal Mueenuddin has a scalpel sharp ability to observe and expose the psychology of power and powerlessness in Pakistani society. This is beautifully crafted, emotionally mature and epic storytelling. A singular voice (ARIFA AKBAR)

This is Where the Serpent Lives works on the scale of great epics, expanding and contracting emotional and biological time while anchored to the tale of a single friendship. With sentences that charm and characters that basically walk off the page into your life, Mueenuddin has given us a family saga recognizable far outside of Pakistan ... It reminded me what good fiction of the long lens and wide scope does: create characters we want alive, among us (LALEH KHADIVI)

Terrific, evocative,

The four stories that intersect in this sweeping story set in Pakistan are so interesting, beautifully written, and full of questions and politics. The last part had me captivated, sad, breathless at what was happening. Beautifully read, also