Dead Man’s Prisoner is a fascinating novel by a former provincial bureaucrat of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. It addresses the despicable tribal tradition of Sawara where young girls are married off into a hostile family to end a blood feud. In such societies, the women end up bearing the brunt, as they have through millennia, to save their families from sure destruction at the hands of ruthless enemies. Young girls and women thus become sacrificial lambs at the altar of towering egos and man-made traditions.