Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE

Adnan Khan

For readers of Brother by David Chariandy and Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, Adnan Khan's blistering debut novel, THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE, investigates themes of race, class, masculinity, and contemporary relationships.

Omar Ali, twenty-seven-year-old line cook and petty criminal, gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend's father at work, informing Omar that Anna has committed suicide. Unable to process or articulate his grief, and suffering from insomnia, Omar embarks on a quest to obtain her suicide note from her elusive parents. As he unravels, Omar finds himself getting involved in break-ins, online terrorism, dealing with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and losing his best friend as he becomes less recognizable.

THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE examines expectationsboth intimate and politicalon brown men, exploring ideas of cultural identity and the tropes we use to represent them.

Adnan Khan has written for VICE, The Globe and Mail, and Hazlitt, for which he was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In 2016, he was awarded the RBC Charles Taylor Prize for emerging writers. THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE is his debut novel. Please see praise below.

Available products
Book Published by Arsenal Pulp Press (N-A)

Comments

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 comprises in its alternating nihilism and tenderness. Quill and Quire, September 2019

Khan... writes with a noir sensibility, equal parts violence and tenderness... [with access to] some fundamental truths of being the person left behind by a suicide death. Drinking only makes you drunk; work doesn't bring sleep. And you will get through this, but not unchanged. The Globe & Mail

CBC Books' "Best Canadian fiction" List of 2019

A raw, gritty, shiver-inducingbut very readableaccount of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction. Kirkus Reviews