‘Who Will Remain’ – The Crisis of Masculinity, a novel of substance

THOUGHTFUL, considered, reflective – and impressive – Kasim Ali is rather like his second novel, ‘Who Will Remain’.

But don’t think of it as a soft read – its power lies in its gentle, skilful pacing that settles down – after a shocking drug related death of a young man and then builds real tension in its last segment.

Set in Alum Rock, an area of Birmingham, which is home to many immigrants and their offspring, the area has a reputation as a place few people can escape – more mentally, than physically and is at heart what ‘Who Will Remain’ is about.

Some consider it a run-down ghetto but for writer Ali it’s a place of safety and comfort – everyone knows everyone pretty much and Asian clothes and food shops abound.

Ali shows how the environment shapes the way Amir – the central character of ‘Who Will Remain’ thinks.

At university and doing okay academically – it is challenging but Amir seems to be coping.

Living initially at home with his third generation Pakistani origin parents, Ali paints a vivid picture of family and social life and the pressures young men of Muslim Pakistani heritage might face.

Ali himself was born and grew up in the area and is writing about lives he knows well – while this is fiction, it also has power and a stamp of authenticity – that is one of the novel’s undoubted strengths.

It’s a window into lives we rarely see in the media – except negatively, often.

His first novel, ‘Good Intentions’, was published to much acclaim in 2022 and is about a young British Pakistani Muslim man in a relationship with a black woman – both Muslim – but Nur, the central male character, struggles to meet the expectations of his traditional parents.

His second novel perhaps examines masculinity even more and is shaped somewhat by his personal experience of the job market.

Ali has a career as an editor – he edits other writers – and he’s a rare breed – working class, Pakistani Muslim origin and working in what many would perceive as an ‘elitist’ world.

“I thought I’d be published when I was like 40,45,” Ali only half-joked, when www.asianculturevulture.com met him. “I really like Toni Morrison (the great black American novelist) and she’s has this incredible career being an editor.

“And she published all these authors and I thought, ‘do you know what – maybe I can do that, be an editor.”

And so it was after an English degree at the University of Derby, he looked for openings in the publishing industry – he got on the internship at Faber & Faber – widely regarded as the place to be for serious writers (and editors).

“It was just very lonely, I don’t have any family in London, I was very poor and then after the internship, I applied for many jobs, didn’t get them (even with Faber & Faber on his CV).”

He moved out of London, to Nottingham and then back to the family home after a spell of unemployment.

For anyone who has had this sort of chastening experience, moving back to the parental home when another path has opened up, albeit briefly – is hard, demoralising.

“It was very difficult,” Ali reflected but it is where the seeds of ‘Who Will Remain’ were probably deeply sewn. He actually wrote this before his first published novel.

Ali did get back into publishing with a small publisher and is now with Penguin Random House and has been an editor for a few years now.

Amir begins to feel estranged from his folks, his older brother has left university and is about to be married to someone from their community, has a good job and is on his way, as some would see it.

He has hit ‘the jackpot’, whereas Amir has split up from his long-term school sweetheart of the same faith and is drifting emotionally.

There is academic pressure, family expectations and perhaps most acute of all, financial worries.

His solution is to help a local drug dealer – while crudely, it is about getting mixed up with the wrong crowd – the strength of Ali’s novel lies in how easy, almost natural, it is for Amir to do this – for someone in his predicament.

A new form of family develops around Amir. It is macho but also embracing and accepting – his identity is being drawn now in a different way – beyond the dreamy spires of academia, for something that feels real and cogent to him – with money comes a form of power and freedom too. There is alienation from the family, while the pull of his new lifestyle becomes all enveloping.

There is an avuncular figure in ‘Who Will Remain’ – he is Amir’s sort of mirror conscience, someone who has seen both sides – and now, sticks to the straight and narrow and is something of a success and redemption story.

It sounds a little trite here – but read the novel and you see how beautifully Ali has woven this thread into the fabric of his novel.

There are so many different elements that make Amir behave the way he does – it’s complex, real and engaging (for a reader).

At the end of our conversation, Ali reveals that his family don’t really understand what he does (still).

“If I get a TV show or something like that, (they might)” he explained. “Parents have expectations and children sometimes turn their back on those.”

He is one of four children and has a younger brother and an older sister. His father is an Uber driver – it’s a long way from the literary bright lights.

Though he doesn’t get into it in a big way, he felt many young men of a similar background to Amir are veering towards a small C conservatism.

“Some men say, ‘women have too much’ – women in their 20s have careers, some men don’t, and they feel worthless – they think, ‘how can I marry someone earning more money than me?’ – so some of this is coming from that and when I was writing this book, I wanted to tap into that, that feeling of powerlessness.

“It’s where you have a lack of control in your own life, where do you go?”

Indeed, like all good fiction, it asks questions, explores dilemmas and issues, and throws a light on a world where few, if any, people are looking – with sympathy or understanding.

‘Who Will Remain’ by Kasim Ali published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins)

Kasim Ali – https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/who-will-remain-kasim-ali?variant=54869542830459