In her debut novel, author Fatima Bhutto writes of things she has seen and felt when they were uncomfortably close to her life — strife in a region marred by neglect and lives ripped apart in hours because of the choice of a select few.

Bhutto’s previous memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, blamed Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari for the assassination of her father, Mir Murtaza. Sure, her family name brings to mind games of power, blood and conflict. But it isn’t her family’s history which runs through her latest offering, The Shadow Of The Crescent Moon. It is Bhutto’s work and travels as a journalist in strife-stricken regions which render a grim, melancholy air to the story of her protagonists in her novel.