It’s the channelling of herself into a new kind of writer, one who does not abandon her past but looks ahead firmly taking along with her all the recent socio-political experiences accrued. Before She Sleeps will become her transitional work in her oeuvre in time to come. Yet the further one reads Before She Sleeps the sense that the story is an excuse for the author’s personality and beliefs that run deep through, definitely more in this book than any of the previous novels Bina Shah wrote. Or “All beef, eggs, in fact anything natural, is created in a lab with synthetic polymers, proteins, DNA.” as news trickles in of meat being manufactured in labs. More so given recent news coming in of 40,000-year-old worms being revived to life. The relevance of Before She Sleeps with references to “rare whales and giant turtles that had been cloned back into existence”. Though the dark side of the viciousness of women towards other women too exists. Sometimes it is fleeting, sometimes more permanent. This bonding happens amongst strangers too. The Panah can be a metaphor for the silent community women tend to form together even in the most public of spaces with one or two looked up to as guides/mentors. None of this is really fiction, it’s only pushing the boundaries of truth or reality as we know it today a little further. The premise for Before She Sleeps is so plausible since it seems much of it already exists if we search long and hard. The story revolves mostly around twenty-four-year-old Sabine who has been living in Panah since she was seventeen. Their business is to offer platonic cuddles to male clients in Green City but it is all to be kept under wraps otherwise the “Agency” will hunt them down. They survive by paying their bills in cryptocurrency with purchases usually made on the black market. These women are led by a leader, Lina, and only appear under the cover of darkness. Their space is called Panah which in Persian means shelter. ( On Twitter: ) It is about an “illegal” commune of women who reside in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Green City. Before She Sleeps is Pakistani writer Bina Shah’s fifth novel.

Before She Sleeps by Bina Shah