Dear Haider is a debut novel by Lili Zeng. It is told in the first person by Elizabeth or “Liz” as she prefers to be called, a 20-year-old Chinese-Canadian woman living in Montreal who is spending her summer doing a paid internship in Germany.

An only child, and a musical prodigy, she was never quite “good enough” to compete on the world stage, something she reluctantly realizes and so, to please her parents, she pursued a math and physics program at university. She does well in her courses and has befriended Chris, a classmate who is definitely on the Autism spectrum, although it is never mentioned in the book. Liz views Chris as her boyfriend, although he is emotionally distant and doesn’t return much affection, despite Liz’s best efforts to want to love him.

Shortly after landing in Germany, Liz decides to break it off with Chris, as he is not giving her the emotional support she craves.

“Chris, this isn’t working. If it continues, I’ll have to stop talking to you at all.”

“If this is really what you want, It’s OK with me.”

Freed from her ties to Chris, Liz delves into life with her new group of friends, an international collection of fellow interns. She feels like she is only now discovering who she is and seeing the world, literally and figuratively, for the first time. Her horizons are broadening, and she is happy.

In this group of foreign interns is Haider Ali who lives in Mississauga Ontario, but is originally from Kuwait. He is a Muslim and an engineering student at U of T. A friendship develops, as Haider is everything Chris was not: polite, attentive and not obsessively focussed on his studies to the extent Chris was. On a group trip to the Netherlands, they become closer and start holding hands. Henceforth, their relationship deepens, to the point of love, and Haider moves in with Liz and her roommate.

From such innocent beginnings, a relationship fraught with issues eventually comes to the fore, and when the internships are over and they have to return to Canada for classes, the long-distance relationship begins to take its toll emotionally and mentally, particularly on Liz. She cannot deal with being separated from Haider, but unlike Liz, Haider has deep ties to his family and culture. Liz is an “empty carcass”, and Haider has filled it with love, understanding and a sense of family. As such, he has considerable control over Liz, but he never abuses it. He does, however, get exasperated with Liz for her indecisions about her education, and the life she wants (“I didn’t know what future I wanted! That was the problem!”) versus the life that Haider envisions for them. Several times, over Skype, they break up. “I just want out of my life” she confesses to Haider.

After the final split, Liz’s life quickly unravels. She cannot focus on her education, she starts to suffer from paranoia, drops out of school, and seeks spiritual and psychiatric help, yet descends into madness.

I found Dear Haider to be somewhat uneven in the storytelling, and it suffers from some of the pitfalls of writing in the first person, such as so many “I” sentences and main characters that are difficult to like (but I didn’t dislike them either). Dear Haider reads like a YA novel as there is little sex or profanity, but there are great insights into the difficulties of a mixed relationship and the mental and emotional toll it takes on the parties involved.

All in all, it is a good debut novel that held my interest throughout.

Reviewed by James M. Fisher, editor of The Seaboard Review and founding editor of The Miramichi Reader. He lives in Miramichi NB with his wife Diane, Eddie the cat and Buster the dog.

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Thank you to Baraka Books for providing a copy of the book! Dear Haider will be out June 1st, 2024.