Stealing Nasreen tackles love triangles and the lies they cause

Shaffiq and Salma, a married couple from Mumbai, are new immigrants to Toronto. After their immigration, Shaffiq, once a qualified accountant, is forced to find work as a janitor in a hospital, while his wife Salma, once a teacher, can only find work as a cashier. Welcome to the plotline of Stealing Nasreen, the first novel by Toronto-based author Farzana Doctor.
Enter Nasreen, a South Asian lesbian psychologist who needs a little counselling of her own. After Nasreen meets Shaffiq through a series of chance encounters at work, the story begins to weave a tangled love triangle while each character attempts to avoid the pain, loss and grief they are experiencing. All this comes to a head when a major intervention leads to the discovery that their own lies have been the underlying cause of so much emotional chaos.
I met up with Doctor over a cup of tea to get a better understanding of her life and her novel. Doctor, now a full-time social worker and part-time author, admitted that while she spent a great deal of time writing as a child, that dedication began to wane after time. However, now that she has taken up writing again on a more regular basis, she is enjoying her success.
“If you want to write – and write well – you have to create the time and space for it,” she said.
After reading the book, I was curious to find out why Doctor did not explore in greater detail the aspects of family opposition and negativity experienced by South Asian lesbians who come out to their families.
“There is such a widespread notion that South Asian parents are so underexposed to these issues and so on […] I wanted to have something that pushes back against the stereotype. I wanted to write how those fathers are today. [Nasreen’s dad] is a little uncomfortable with it, but is mostly respectful of his daughter. There are so many stories about how bad South Asian families are [in terms of responding to their daughters], and it does not have to be that way. My experience was really good, and I wanted to challenge the stereotype a bit,” she said.
While talking with the author, it was clear that although the book is a work of fiction, it contains many similarities to her life. Doctor’s family moved from Zambia to Canada when she was seven months old, and while writing the novel, her family and the surrounding multicultural community in Toronto served as a guide to understanding the South Asian culture and the immigrant experience.
This book deals with many relationship themes, including those between patient and therapist, parent and child and lesbian and heterosexual, and engages the reader with what Doctor refers to as “magical realism.” However, while this book touches on many controversial and contemporary themes, at its core Stealing Nasreen is simply an honest, down-to-earth novel about people who must recognize their true selves and admit the lies that they have told.