Saima Mir: Jia Khan's Last Stand and What She Left Behind

Saima Mir returns to The Conversation to mark the release of Deliverance, the closing chapter of her Jia Khan trilogy, following The Khan and Vengeance. Two crime writers, both working from lived heritage, sit down to talk about what it actually feels like to let a character go.In this episode:Ending a trilogy — the strange grief of finishing a series years in the making, and Jia Khan's evolution from her origins to a character defined by strength, complexity, and resilienceFrom the newsroom to the page — how Saima's years in crime reporting shaped the world of the booksThe double standard — why women of colour writing morally complicated characters get held to a different account than everyone else, and why seeing yourself in a story still mattersDismantling the stereotype — the tired narratives about women of colour that Saima's work sets out to challengeWhat the heroine taught the writer — what Jia Khan revealed to Saima about herself, on and off the pageAnd to close things out: favourite jokes, leaps of faith worth taking, and the strangest thing either of them turned up while researching international money laundering.Buy DeliveranceFollow Saima MirPre- Order 'The Shadow Carver' PbBuy me a cup of coffee ☕️ | Buy books by my guestsFollow Me Bluesky | Substack | Instagram | Facebook | Threads Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.