Kann man eine Heimat haben und gleichzeitig frei sein? Sadiq glaubt das. Er ist ein junger Schweizer in Zürich, wo er sich frei, aber heimatlos fühlt. Er zieht nach Karachi in Pakistan, die Stadt seiner Geburt, kauft dort das legendäre Kino Apollo und zeigt Arthouse-Filme.
Leila, a Pakistani physicist working for Pakistan's patriotic nuclear weapons programme, falls in love with Sadiq. She wants him to return to Zurich and take her with him, where she hopes to live a life of freedom. But for Sadiq, Leila is the humanised home he has longed for. He wants to stay in Karachi.
Sadiq's choice of film provokes the wrath of a cleric on the religious Right who calls for Sadiq to be killed and the cinema to be destroyed. A liberal cleric issues a counter-fatwa in favour of artistic freedom. Riots erupt in the streets of Karachi.
Karachi Dreams tells the story of competing visions of life and society, conflicting views of humanity and the world, and the clash between small-mindedness and megalomania. It is a meeting of jazz and folk music, of a Christian-occidental worldview and Muslim-oriental philosophy, of pain and reverie.
Swiss involvement in the colonisation of India and the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India form the historical basis of this novel, which is set between 1995 and 1997.