Mahreen Sohail’s debut story collection Small Scale Sinners, which spans settings from a college campus to a child soldier training camp, has been awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
“Through sharp and striking prose, Small Scale Sinners achieves the rare feat of capturing the full breadth of human experience in a slim volume,” said Lauren Francis-Sharma, chair of the PEN/Faulkner Awards Committee, in a statement released Monday. “The stories illuminate the terrain of desire, rage, love, and loss that shapes nearly every life.”
Originally from Pakistan and now based in Washington, D.C., Sohail noted that she spent a decade crafting the book to “map out possible ways of being an independent woman in the world.”
The award comes with a $15,000 prize. Past recipients include literary icons such as Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, and Ann Patchett.
