The Wish Maker
by Ali Sethi
Hamish Hamilton, 2009
This is a sophisticated print version of the ubiquitous generational television family drama all too common across Southasia. Told from the eyes of phoren-returned Zaki Shirazi, whose trip home to Karachi is the trigger for the story, the thinly veiled autobiographical narrative fails to grip. The standard-issue dominant grandmother, widowed journalist mother and umpteen cousins, uncles, aunts and family retainers make up the cast of this long and rambling debut novel. The broad canvas of the 1980s childhood of Zaki and his aunt Samar Api – more like a sister – does provide some captivating vignettes of Pakistan's turbulent political scene, with Zaki's mother Zakia's rebellious involvement in street protests juxtaposed with Benazir Bhutto's flamboyance. However, despite some engaging snippets such as Samar's Bollywood obsession, or her crusade to lose weight via Jane Fonda DVDs, Sethi, like Zaki, cannot seem to shake off his outsider location, despite repeated entreaties to the reader to behold and exult in his belonging. The result is a Pakistan put on display, with the trivial dissected to transform the mundane into exotica, and a stilted effort to portray the ordinariness and universality of love and longing. If this is what the back cover announces as the "new global novel", give us the local. (Laxmi Murthy)
The Al Qaeda Connection: The Taliban and terror in Pakistan's tribal areas
by Imtiaz Gul
Viking, 2009
Whatever the diagnosis – too much top-level access, an overemphasis on desk-based analysis, or simply aiming at a different audience than this reviewer – the ailments in this new work remain the same. While literally encyclopaedic with regards to the complicated militant structures in the 'Af-Pak' frontier – here's a chapter offering vignettes on the various tribal agencies in Pakistan; here's one giving brief bios of the major militant leaders – there is little that goes beyond this approach, too little to cogently tie together the various, seemingly disparate strands. Sadly, for a major new effort from a senior journalist with a trunkful of relevant reportage spanning decades, most lacking in the narrative is any great feeling for what is actually taking place on the ground. Giving readers such a rooted understanding is crucial in the aftermath of the recent death of Baitullah Mehsud. For instance, an early chapter titled "Why Pakistan's Tribal Areas Fell to Al Qaeda" seems to promise exactly the answers, or at least exactly the analysis, that many readers would be seeking from such a work. Yet once a too-cursory history lesson finishes up, readers are stuck with such over-generalised blandishments as, "The presence of the Al Qaeda hierarchy … provided the requisite inspiration to the ultra-conservative and religious tribesmen of Waziristan to join the ranks of Pakistani Taliban." While Gul is quick to note when he spoke with, say, the new governor, the president or the head of the Pakistan Army, the proof of his actual interaction with those "ultra-conservative tribesmen" is oddly lacking throughout. A top-down look at this endlessly complex situation is not only unsatisfactory, but unhelpful. (Carey L Biron)