The Red One by Safia Fazlul

Nisha, "Azar's beautiful wife," lives a life surrounded by all the modern luxuries of a wealthy suburban home in Toronto. Her father is a taxi driver, her mother a conservative religious housewife jealously craving a better material life. Tormented by her childhood memories of serial sexual abuse by a family friend, contemptuous of the lies lived by her circle of fake friends, Nisha is unwilling to have a child by her dominant, patronizing husband. She finds escape in mindless shopping sprees and secretly spirals into an addiction to a drug called the "red powder." In this state one day she meets the mysterious Red One, an archetypal strong man to whom she's instantly and dangerously attracted, who promises her release from her pain. But is he real or a figment of her fervid imagination? In a thrilling denouement to the novel she finds the answer.

Safia Fazlul, of Bangladeshi origin, lived in Oslo, Norway, before coming to Canada at the age of eleven. Her first novel, The Harem, was published soon after she completed her BA at the University of Toronto. Recently retired from the financial industry, Safia continues to write while enjoying her new motherhood. She lives in Toronto.