A coming-of-age novel in a world marked by political turmoil and the threat of violence．

As a child in Pakistan, Jahan was raised on her grandmother’s stories, influenced by the demons of folklore, and the memory of violence and forced displacement caused by the British partition of India – tales that taught her to be wary of the world. But her grandmother’s life, filled with quiet defiance, hints at another truth.

Jahan rebels against the constraints she lives under as a young woman growing up in Lahore, and migrates to Australia, where she meets her husband, whose family is Arabic. As she reckons with the unruliness of her body after a miscarriage, and the bushfires which threaten their home and their horses on the rural outskirts of Sydney, she is forced to confront the violence that haunts her, against women, animals, and in nature.

A feminist anti-tale, written in a unique, compelling and expressive style, What Kept You? explores survival, metamorphosis, and the radical freedom of choosing one’s own ending. What Kept You? echoes the thematic richness of Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under and Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, with its unapologetic exploration of ancestral burden and identity, while also standing apart with its unique blend of myth, fairytale and Eastern storytelling traditions.

Raaza Jamshed’s writing has appeared in Guernica, Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books and Australian Book Review. She holds a doctorate in Creative Arts from Western Sydney University where she is an adjunct fellow. Her story, ‘Miracle Windows’, was a prizewinner　in the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story competition. In 2021 she launched Guernica magazine’s Global Spotlights series Fiction as a fiction editor.