Book Launch | Squatters by Saba Brelvi

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Two families collide in Saba Brelvi’s THE SQUATTERS, a gripping debut that offers a piercing exploration of female friendship, particularly the kinds of bonds forged through proximity, motherhood, and social performance. Emotionally incisive, and morally unflinching, THE SQUATTERS explores the limits of compassion, the cost of solidarity, and interrogates the hidden boundaries of empathy within even the most intimate communities, revealing how quickly generosity can collapse when stability, property, and belonging feel under threat.

Surrey is a quiet, affluent area just outside of London, replete with tree-lined streets, excellent schools, and carefully maintained lives. But among its polished homes and close-knit social circles, Dalia Waheed has never fully felt that she belongs. Though she and her husband embody the promise of second-generation immigrant success, Dalia cannot shake the sense that she has become trapped inside a life that is comfortable, stable—and profoundly disconnected from the person she once imagined herself to be. When Dalia begins volunteering at a local nonprofit serving refugees and asylum seekers, she meets Hajira and Yusuf, a young couple who have fled their home country in search of safety in the U.K. Hajira is heavily pregnant, frightened, and living in grim government housing while awaiting the outcome of her asylum claim. Drawn to her in ways she struggles to explain, Dalia cannot ignore Hajira’s plea for help. Helping another mother secure a safer place to live feels less like charity than obligation. But what starts as a simple act of compassion quickly spirals
into something far more dangerous.

As Dalia becomes increasingly entangled in Hajira and Yusuf’s lives, the boundaries between empathy and responsibility begin to collapse. Her well-intentioned efforts place mounting strain on her marriage, her friendships, and her standing within the very community she has spent years trying to enter. And as the situation escalates into public conflict, Dalia is forced to confront a question that becomes impossible to outrun: does motherhood make us more radical—or more protective of the lives we have built?

Saba Brelvi writes with remarkable clarity and restraint about the tension between political ideals and personal comfort, between safety and justice, between private domesticity and collective responsibility. There are no easy heroes in THE SQUATTERS, only people with varying degrees of courage, fear, and self-interest attempting to live ethically in an unequal world.

A novel of extraordinary emotional intelligence and urgency, THE SQUATTERS asks what we owe to one another, what motherhood demands of us, and how much we are truly willing to risk for the lives of others.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Saba Brelvi is a Muslim American writer from California. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University and has spent more than two decades working in the nonprofit sector. She currently resides in Abu Dhabi with her family. The Squatters is her debut novel.