Omar Ali is a ticking time bomb. A phone call from his ex-girlfriend Anna’s father plunges him into darkness when he learns that she’s committed suicide. Clueless and hurting, Omar turns to violence and petty crime to cope. His nefarious activities catch the attention of the RCMP, who pressure him into becoming an informant at a mosque they suspect harbours a terrorist cell. Unraveling from insomnia, sorrow, and rage, Omar grasps at his last shred of hope, embarking on a quest to find the note he’s convinced Anna left for him.
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“‘There Has to Be a Knife’ is an entertaining page-turner, at once a thriller and an intersectional, transgressive work of fiction that makes no compromises in its alternating nihilism and tenderness.”
“A raw, gritty, shiver-inducing—but very readable—account of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction.”
“A raw, provocative, fluidly written account highlighting how Omar’s Muslim identity complicates his personal pain.”
“Adnan Khan’s debut novel is a nuanced look at how trauma and masculinity converge in relationships…Through short and succinct sentences, the novel explores suicide and depression, intense longing for intimacy, racism and the relationship between violence and vulnerability.”
“He is a complicated, troubled protagonist who is trying to figure out his relationships with men and women both…The novel is a powerful look at violence, loss, racism, and toxic masculinity.”
“The novel probes into struggles with life, loss, and the systemic frustrations of being a young Muslim man…Khan doesn’t hold back when it comes to the intensity of his protagonist’s narrative.”
“Khan writes with a noir sensibility, equal parts violence and tenderness…I found a lot in this story of Omar’s unwinding and his fraught quest for something that will help him pull it back together. I hope whoever needs this novel finds it.”
“The book is a claustrophobic and often disorienting character study and a sharp dissection of how grief—wrongly channeled and inflamed by grievance—can fuel destructive masculine behaviour, inciting flailing verbal aggression on the internet and in everyday life.”
“Adnan Khan is a writer whose words and story ‘There Has to be a Knife’ carry heft. His voice is the one that many of us have been waiting for; we have suspected that such talent exists in this country – new, fresh and weighty. ‘There Has to be a Knife’ is a must read.”
Lee Maracle, author of Ravensong, My Conversations with Canadians, and others.
“Like a sort of ‘Notes from Underground’ for the hip-hop generation, Adnan Khan's darkly funny, compulsively readable and deceptively moving first novel stares headlong into the struggles of its young characters and the harm they cause to others and themselves. In raw, street-wise vernacular ‘There Has to be a Knife’ offers an acute study of masculinity, how unexpressed grief snarls through anomie into resentment and rage, and the social scripts that exist for all of us -- how we play our parts, and how we might also write our way into new stories.”
Pasha Malla, author of Fugue States, The Withdrawal Method and others.
“No one sleeps in Adnan Khan’s propulsive novel of sex, Reddit, and precarity that brilliantly blends a critique of Canadian 'tolerance' with a raunchy paean to first love.”
Tamara Faith Berger, author of Queen Solomon, Lie With Me, and others.
“This is a book that’s alive, moving through the streets of Toronto, wiping sweat off of its electric body that hopes for resolution, that doesn’t sleep, that presses against women’s bodies, that longs for some kind of peace that never comes. Adnan Khan’s poetic, sexy, and raw ‘There Has to Be a Knife’ showcases one of the most intense and original new works on the CanLit scene. I read it over two sleepless nights, which is how it demands to be read—without stopping, your body too buzzing from exhaustion, your mind buzzing from the excitement of discovering a new, brilliant, and bold literary voice.”
Jowita Bydlowska, author of Drunk Mom and Guy.
“A searing meditation on isolation and grief in the modern world. ‘There Has To Be A Knife’ is a striking debut.”
Iain Reid, author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Foe, and others.
