The Sand Fish offers readers a fascinating glimpse into another corner of the world. Set in the 1950s in what is now the United Arab Emirates, it tells the poignant and powerful story of a rebellious young woman trapped in a repressive society.

Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who've fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish—until they don't, and found a rebel community in the desert.