Beyond the Prison Gate

Gul has spent her life being the person everyone else depends on.
A wife. A mother. A teacher.

Then she is sent to prison.

Suddenly, the ordinary life she barely thought about is gone.

A door she cannot open. A telephone call she cannot make whenever she chooses. A family she can see only during precious visits measured by the clock.

Gul arrives frightened and completely unprepared for the world behind the prison gate. She has to learn its routines, its unwritten rules and, most importantly, when not to ask questions.

But prison is not quite the place she imagined.

There is loneliness and fear, but there is also laughter. There are women carrying stories she knows nothing about. There is Rachel, whose friendship makes the hardest days bearable. And in the prison classroom, Gul discovers something she thought she had lost.

She can still be Miss.

Outside, life refuses to stand still. Sameer is learning to manage without her. Her sons are growing into lives of their own. And her daughter Leila asks the one question Gul cannot honestly answer:

"Mum, when you come home, will everything be the same?"

For one year and ten months, Gul dreams of the day the gate will finally open.

But as that day approaches, another question begins to trouble her.

What if going home is not the same as going back?

Beyond the Prison Gate is a moving, warm and quietly humorous novel about family, friendship, identity and the ordinary freedoms we rarely notice - until they are taken away.