When Fireflies Dance

Lallu has dreamed since childhood of pulling his family out of debt slavery in a bhatti — a brick factory in Lahore, where his parents, like many other residents of Pakistan, are unsuccessfully trying to pay off an exorbitant, ever-growing debt that is passed down "by inheritance" from generation to generation. After the tragic death of his older brother, he takes a job as a driver for a wealthy family to make ends meet. But when his father falls ill and his sister is about to get married, money becomes catastrophically scarce. For the sake of saving his loved ones, Lallu is ready to do anything: from humiliating pleas to blackmail and theft. The novel exposes the rotten underbelly of a society where the caste system and corruption at all levels turn the lives of the poor into a deadly trap.