Authors of
Paradise Villas (Levine Querido 2023)
Alexandra Atiya is a writer, academic, and journalist. Originally from New York, she received a degree in history from Harvard and is currently pursuing a PhD in medieval literature at the University of Toronto. Her fiction, poetry, and articles have appeared in publications internationally. Together with co-author Salman Toor, she presented an early version of Paradise Villas at the New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium. Their work was also profiled in The Rumpus and featured in an exhibition at Honey Ramka gallery in Brooklyn.
Salman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983. He lives and works in New York City. Toor received his Masters of Fine art (Painting) at Pratt institute in Brooklyn in 2009. His paintings are figurative, varying in scale and style, ranging in subject from Art History, Queer Culture, and Post-Colonialism. Paradise Villas is Toor’s first graphic novel project as a writer and illustrator. Toor has had several solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Pakistan and has participated in significant group shows such as the Kochi Biennale 2016. A recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, Toor has been profiled in a number of publications, including Interview, W Magazine, ArtAsiaPacific, Foreign Policy, THEM, GAYLETTER, The Friday Times, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. His solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC will exhibited in November 2020.
Alexandra Atiya & Salman Toor
Books by Alexandra & Salman
Paradise Villas (Levine Querido 2023)
Fourteen-year-old Ozzy is having a hard time at school and at home. In his competitive and strict boys’ school in Lahore, Pakistan, he’s bullied for his effeminate mannerisms and for preferring classical paintings to cricket matches. His teachers and his parents chastise him for copying “immoral” images of statues and odalisques instead of focusing on his schoolwork. And to make matters worse, he discovers that his rebellious sixteen-year-old sister, Zohra, once his confidant, has betrayed him by falling in love with one of his bullies
But Ozzy’s life changes when he gets assigned to work on an end-of-year school project with Rashid, a fellow eccentric whose family is wealthier and worldlier than Ozzy’s. Rashid opens Ozzy’s eyes to the possibility of college abroad and to the wealth of artistic life in Lahore. Together the boys explore the city's sprawling markets and Mughal palaces, searching for inspiration. But in the course of their burgeoning friendship, Ozzy must learn how to balance who he wants to be while staying true to who he is.
Set against a backdrop of life in Lahore, where rising temperatures and intensifying blackouts compound familial tensions, Paradise Villas depicts Ozzy’s struggle to understand himself and his family.