Those Trees Outlive Them

Spanning five generations from 1870 to 2013, this fascinating saga begins in a small village in colonial India and ends in modern-day New York City. Each chapter unfurls both an individual story and part of an epic family history.

Jani’s prose is visually rich and poetically weaves characters’ tales with intense, lyrical details. From British colonial rule in India, to Pakistan’s chaotic democracy, to 21st century America, inquisitive readers will adore this multi-dimensional cultural journey.

We first meet Fakir, a fatherless child who becomes a mystical storyteller, then an unlikely entrepreneur. Runaway teen Alam reinvents himself as an art teacher and womanizer over his adventures. Ambitious Ali Gohar journeys from Pakistan to attend NYU, while Jani grows up enduring racial tensions in 1980s Sindh before pursuing the “American Dream.” Finally, young physician Kabeer gives up a lucrative U.S. career to volunteer overseas, only to get swept back to his homeland by devastating floods.

Spanning continents and colourful personalities, Those Trees Outlived Them is an intimate look at one family’s roots across borders and generations.

Jani, whose full name is Zahid Dara Abro, is a romantic at the quintessence with skills in painting, poetry, and prose. He predominantly expresses himself in his mother tongue, Sindhi. Jani writes about the remnants of life’s carnage, yet at the same time he draws inspiration from the garbage where life crawls. His aesthetics are abstracts like reverse tenses. His analytical side, coupled with an immense attention to detail, is evident in his work. Jani has viewed life through various lenses, including rural and urban perspectives, the developing and developed world. Over time, he has honed the ability to capture subtle nuances and reveal their true meanings.

His novel Those Trees Outlive Them is a rolling tale of how five generations search for meaning and find the object of life itself, their overlapping narratives bridge the gaps between poverty and wealth, past and present, east and west, and good and bad.

Jani is a trained physician, working as a neurophysiologist (an allied health technologist) in New York/New Jersey since 1999.