English Professor Amin Ahmad’s New Novel Examines the Hidden Costs of Power

When Amin Ahmad, lecturing fellow of English, began thinking about his new novel, inspiration arrived unexpectedly along the New Jersey Turnpike.  

“I saw a license plate on a car that said, ‘Singh is king,’” he said. “I thought, that’s a cool license plate. It’s a declaration.” 

That image stayed with him, mixed with other ideas: articles about ultra-wealthy Indian immigrant families in New York, a real estate tycoon who was recreating India on a Long Island estate, and Ahmad’s longtime admiration for “The Great Gatsby.” 

 “I heard about that estate out on Long Island, and I thought, ‘that’s some Gatsby stuff,’” he said. From there emerged the question driving “A Killer in the Family”: what happens when an outsider marries into a family built on enormous wealth, and even bigger secrets? 

Set among New York City’s Indian elite, the family drama follows Ali, a reformed Mumbai party boy who enters an arranged marriage with Maryam, the daughter of real estate mogul Abbas Khan.  

After the wedding, Ali is swept into a world of private helicopters, supertall skyscrapers, and sprawling estates. But as rumors swirl around Abbas Khan’s past, Ali begins to suspect that the family’s success rests on something darker.   

Ahmad knew the story had to be told from Ali’s point of view. “Everybody has secrets,” he said of the Khan family. “I couldn’t have it told from within the family, because they are not self-aware, they’re all hiding secrets from each other.”  

He points to Nick Carraway in “The Great Gatsby” as a model for Ali: “He’s an outsider. As he’s entering the world of Gatsby, he’s learning about that world, and that’s a great device for the reader.” 

Ahmad liked the idea of arranged marriage not as a spectacle, but as a pressure-filled emotional structure.  

“If Ali didn’t want to have an arranged marriage, he would have to forego the approval of his family and be cut out of their wealth,” Ahmad said. “He doesn’t have the backbone to do that.” For Ahmad, the arrangement became a way to explore what happens when two people commit to intimacy without truly knowing each other. “There’s that strangeness of ending up in a very intimate relationship with somebody you don’t know, with whom you’re tied to for the long term.” 

Gender dynamics also play a big role in the novel, particularly in how value and power show up in the Khan family. 

 Ahmad points to the irony that Maryam, a psychiatrist finishing her medical training, is seen as “not enough,” while Ali, a photographer, is viewed as more valuable to Abbas, the patriarch.  

“They’re both stuck in these gender roles, and they’re struggling to get out,” he said.  

There’s also a gendered tension between sisters. Although Ali is married to Maryam, he’s drawn to Farhan, Maryam’s sister. While Maryam is labeled as respectable, Farhan, a divorcé, is the disgraced black sheep of the family, shunned for her actions and decisions.  

Wealth itself becomes a character in the book. Ahmad was less interested in flashy consumption than in what wealth makes possible. 

In New York, he notes, wealth reshapes physical space: “The richer you are, the higher you are. You have access to sky and views and silence.”  

The result is a city experienced in three dimensions: helicopters replace highways, and weather becomes optional. 

Beneath the glamour, “A Killer in the Family” is deeply concerned with secrecy. Ahmad describes families as “living organisms” that can become “infected with a secret” passed down through generations. 

Drawing from personal experience, he reflected on how silence can corrode relationships over time. “Once you have a tradition or a practice of keeping silence and not mentioning things, not being honest about things,” he said, “that mindset istoxic to future generations.” 

Ahmad came to writing later in life, after a career as an architect, and approaches fiction with a designer’s mindset.  

“I don’t believe in genius and inspiration,” he said. For him, creativity is repetitive: trying ideas, failing quickly and refining what works.  

That philosophy carries into his teaching and his life at Duke. Ahmad started teaching creative writing in the English department on Zoom in the Fall of 2020. Now, he teaches in person and finds connections inside and outside of the classroom.  

Being in Durham and connected to Duke has helped sustain his writing practice.  

“I’m lucky to be in Durham, which has Duke,” he said. “Not only do I get to teach at Duke, but I’m also part of a writing group, some of whom are Duke-affiliated. Having a community of smart writers has been key to keeping on writing.”  

“A Killer in the Family” is available on April 7th wherever books are sold.