Benazir Bhutto's niece to speak in Memorial

The Westin Galleria Hotel will host Fatima Bhutto to discuss her book, Songs of Blood and Sword, on Thursday, Sept. 30.

Bhutto, a member of Pakistan’s most prominent political dynasty, has written a book about the controversial events of the past decade in her family.  

She is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, an elected member of parliament who was assassinated in 1996.  Her aunt, Banazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007.  Bhutto will discuss growing up in the center of Pakistani politics, where violence was never far away.

As an author and journalist, Bhutto has reported from Lebanon, Iran, and Cuba.  She has written weekly columns for Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu newspaper, and its English sister publication, The News. 

Registration for the event is at 6 p.m., to be followed by a light dinner.  The program will begin at 7 p.m. in the Plaza Ballroom.

Tickets for members are $25 and $35 for non-members. Bhutto’s book will be available for purchase.

Source: http://www.ultimatememorial.com/stories/216088-benazir-bhutto-s-niece-to-speak-in-memorial

Benazir Bhutto's niece to speak in Memorial

The Westin Galleria Hotel will host Fatima Bhutto to discuss her book, Songs of Blood and Sword, on Thursday, Sept. 30.

Bhutto, a member of Pakistan’s most prominent political dynasty, has written a book about the controversial events of the past decade in her family.  

She is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, an elected member of parliament who was assassinated in 1996.  Her aunt, Banazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007.  Bhutto will discuss growing up in the center of Pakistani politics, where violence was never far away.

As an author and journalist, Bhutto has reported from Lebanon, Iran, and Cuba.  She has written weekly columns for Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu newspaper, and its English sister publication, The News. 

Registration for the event is at 6 p.m., to be followed by a light dinner.  The program will begin at 7 p.m. in the Plaza Ballroom.

Tickets for members are $25 and $35 for non-members. Bhutto’s book will be available for purchase.

Source: http://www.ultimatememorial.com/stories/216088-benazir-bhutto-s-niece-to-speak-in-memorial

Campaign For Justice for Mir Murtaza Bhutto- September

The consistent efforts of fighting for justice are interpreted as revenge by others. They miss the point all together. One can only seek revenge for something that is replaceable. This relation is not. Revenge won’t be bringing back the one for whose return the awaiting eyes can die for. Persistent fight for justice is to save others from going through the same pain. To put an end to this madness, that can change the course of lives drastically.

For those who think time heals all are delusional. As some things time can’t heal. It can’t bring back people, moments spent with them & most of all the fact that they are not present in your future. Therefore the concept of forgetting with time won’t work. There is no balm which can heal such wounds. The only thing that can come closest to the idea of healing is if the personal struggle can save others from similar ends.

-Fatima A.

When life seems chaotic,
Hope is all that you own,
The violence destroys the calm,
Look at the fluttering flag,
The harmony in sync with the moon
I am that star.

When the path forward seems hazy,
Bridges are nowhere in sight,
The journey feels yours alone,
Look at your skin tepid with heat
Invisible behind the sun
I am that star.

When power silences the voices,
Justice seems to be elusive,
The memories of us fuels your will,
Look into the mirror smiling,
The twinkling in your eyes
I am that star.

When you miss me,
Times seem uncertain,
The heart sings of our separation,
Look up to the dark sky,
The light that shines on you
I am that star.

-kAy

In Solidarity
Fatima Bhutto Fan club

Disclaimer: None of the views expressed here are of Fatima Bhutto or any of her family members. These are views of the team...

Copyright: Fatima Bhutto Fan club.

Please do not reproduce this anywhere without permission.

Fatima Bhutto on Reflections on the Politics of Pakistan

Five Books

13 September 2010

Author and journalist Fatima Bhutto says that to understand Pakistan you must first understand the devastating impact of American foreign policy on the young nation. She tells FiveBooks: ‘They say that there are three forces that determine the direction of Pakistani politics: the army, Allah and America...I think that is slightly overstated because I am not sure Allah has that much to do with it!'

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power by Tariq Ali

Buy The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

Your first book, Tariq Ali’s The Duel, is all about America’s relationship with Pakistan.

They say that there are three forces that determine the direction of Pakistani politics: the army, Allah and America, and I think that is slightly overstated because I am not sure Allah has that much to do with it!

The American involvement in Pakistan goes back almost to the time of the country’s inception. From the 1950s we were already seeing America coming in and involving Pakistan in these South Asian defence pacts and determining the course of the foreign policy of the country. And many people don’t seem to have that awareness of how far back America’s involvement goes. In Urdu the word that we have for imperialism I find to be particularly telling. It’s samraj. What you have to realise is that Urdu is not a language where we have words for computer, or wifi or text messaging. It’s not a language that automatically updates itself as others do, like Arabic or French. So samraj is especially important because it literally means the raj of Uncle Sam.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Please note that the literal meaning of the word Samraj is not Uncle Sam’s Raj. We have sought clarification from Ms. Bhutto on this issue. She has confirmed that she meant to have said that this has become the common, colloquial meaning of the word. We offer our thanks to our readers, who were quick to point out this inconsistency.]

Those of us who have studied our recent history know what an incredibly devastating role the Americans have played. Tariq Ali is one of Pakistan’s bravest historians and critics. So for him to put out this book is an education in the forces of this country’s foreign policy, its economic history and its character. And this relationship with America is the hidden narrative of Pakistani politics. I mean hidden to the rest of the world.

But increasingly in the global public domain.

Yes, in recent years there has been a lot of talk about the Pakistani intelligence services and why they are a force unto themselves, and to answer that question you really have to go back to the 1980s and look at the role that America played in strengthening those institutions, like the army and the ISI. But if you are really serious about understanding that problem you have to go back even further to America’s history. And I am not just talking about the history of supporting the Pakistani army but the history of supporting every single military dictator that the country has had. Because they have all been America’s allies, and a premier American ally that has benefited with rich economic, defence and military aid. If we look at secular movements in this country they haven’t had the same support.

How do you think the recent news about Obama’s imminent plans for American troops to leave Afghanistan will play out in Pakistan?

Well, you know Pakistan has been dragged into this war as the third front and we’ve become the front for the war on terror. We are the launching pad for the American war in Afghanistan, which is a war that most Afghanistanis feel that we have no business participating in.

So there should be relief that they are finally going?

I think we will believe it when we see it. The Americans are so entrenched we have Richard Holbrooke stepping into the country every month or so just to check in on us and tell us what is democratic and what isn’t and how we should be fighting a war that we have been fighting long before the Americans moved in. So I don’t think people believe very much that the Americans will leave Afghanistan. Of course we saw them leave 20 years ago as well and we all know that they didn’t really leave. The legacy remains, the money remains and the policies remain.

Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz

Buy Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan

Your next book, Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz, is more about religion and a journey of faith.

I like Children of Dust because I think it is authentic. I think what we see so much with these immigrant stories coming out of Pakistan are these very basic narratives of third world meets the big city and the big continent. There is a crisis of identity and a questioning of their upbringing and then they come back and are completely destroyed as a human being! And that for me is a very one-dimensional way of writing about this experience.

So what I like about this book is that it is an incredibly brave story of that journey. Here is a young man who was brought up in a conservative environment where he attended a madrassa in rural Pakistan and spent his days memorising the Koran and enduring harsh beatings for his mistakes. Then he goes to America and, as one of the reviews put it, there is this amazing sense of religious whiplash. And what I like is that he isn’t afraid to talk about these issues, the sense of shame about what it means to be a Muslim in a foreign country, because he ended up being relocated to Alabama during his adolescence.

He is good at describing this complicated journey and, unlike these obnoxiously popular novels that attempt to condense a migrant’s experience in 150 pages, he really gives you an insight into this world of conservatism. But it is also about resistance to a system and the evolution that he goes through. But that doesn’t mean he has to be one or the other. He is not a rabid fundamentalist or a liberated Westerner. It is about that space in between that he has to traverse through this journey.

Many of us living here think one of the problems with Pakistan is that our history is written for us by foreigners. If you go to any library and look at any history books on Pakistan, or any political books, they all seem to be written by outsiders, by middle-aged white men. And what is so important about Eteraz is that he is perfectly well placed – much more so than a foreign correspondent who has spent two summers in Pakistan – to talk about issues like fundamentalism and disillusionment, and he is able to discuss this evolving religious language that we now use when speaking about Pakistan. We are a country that allows foreigners to speak for us and these are two very important books written by our own.

Shame by Salman Rushdie

Buy Shame: A Novel

Your next choice, Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame, is often described as a devastating political satire.

I have personal reasons for choosing this. It is the story of two men, two very powerful men. One is based on my grandfather, Pakistan’s former president and prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and the other is based on Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was a military general who overthrew my grandfather and eventually killed him.

In Pakistan we are very quick to condemn Salman Rushdie’s books even if we have never read them and we tend to forget that actually he also has a history in Pakistan. His mother lived in Karachi and he himself spent time in Karachi. You have to remember that the country in the book is fiction but he describes Karachi in fiction like no other fiction writer has done thus far, in the way that he uses language and describes places. And it is a story that Pakistan is all too familiar with – shame and violence and the impact of those two forces.

I think he is incredibly fair to all the parties that he fictionalises, and it is very funny: he says that some men are so great that only they can unmake themselves.

The Mirage of Power: An Inquiry into the Bhutto Years 1971-1977 by Dr Mubashir Hasan

Buy The Mirage of Power: An Inquiry into the Bhutto Years 1971-1977 (Millennium Series (Oxford, England).)

The next book is also about your grandfather: this is The Mirage of Power by Dr Mubashir Hasan.

Yes, this book is also written about that period but is nonfiction and is incredibly important. Dr Mubashir Hasan is a political treasure. He is a founding member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which is a party that has morphed and mutated tremendously since the 1960s and currently rules Pakistan today in a completely bastardised form. He is a former finance minister, and what I think is so important about The Mirage of Power is that it is about the attempt of a popular government to change the system and their failure to do so and their struggles against the bureaucracy and the military machine of this country.

You have got this wonderful insight into the forces that we still deal with today, like the IMF. The popular government at the time told the IMF that they were not going to pay their debt off on their conditions because they were unfair. Instead they were going to restructure their debt payment in a way that benefited Pakistan. The IMF had no choice but to accept that because they were dealing with a popularly elected government. And when we look at the IMF today and their role in Indonesia or Argentina, and the economic stranglehold they have on the third world, I think this book is an eye-opener into the debt myths of the IMF.

What does it feel like to read books about your grandfather?

Well, he was killed three years before I was born. And the problem of being the granddaughter of such an enormous, almost mythological figure in Pakistan is that nobody wants to tell you anything about him that doesn’t paint him or themselves in a nice light! So, The Mirage of Power was the only chance I had of looking objectively at his policies and at the failures of a government that was incredibly progressive and imaginative in what they wanted for the Pakistani people. It is a legacy that continues until this day. But of course he made mistakes and there were errors along the way. But we have a tendency to lionise our politicians here.

And what about you – when you came to write your latest book, Songs of Blood and Sword, it must have been a difficult task to attempt to write about your father’s flaws?

In the sense that I am writing about people who I knew and loved it is impossible for me to divorce myself from that. There is no such thing as objectivity, is there? But I was critical of certain things that had to be spoken about when it comes to my father and grandfather. As a daughter I can’t be critical because he was a wonderful father. But in the choices that he made with his life it is not only necessary that I am able to look at them with a critical eye but, in terms of this country and my life and my family’s life, it is urgent that I do so. Because if we don’t talk about the mistakes that people have made we are just going to repeat them.

With Zulfikar, who was an extraordinary force of life, so much so he still drives Pakistani politics today, there is nothing disloyal about being critical because it was his mistakes that led to not only his downfall but the change in the Pakistani system. He had an ability to be different in certain periods from other leaders. He sent the army to put down an insurgency in Balochistan and great abuses were committed by that army. So that was an extraordinary failure on his part. And the same is true for my father, when I talk about the choices that he made to confront a military regime by force: it was a decision that changed his life for ever.

Those are not choices that I would make but, living as I do in Pakistan with this stranglehold in politics, it becomes very important to say these are the mistakes made by these men, because if not it means we believe that there is a curse on the family and somehow we are destined for tragedy. I simply don’t believe that. People make mistakes.

Empires of the Indus by Alice Albinia

Buy Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River

Let’s hear about your last book, Empires of the Indus, by Alice Albinia.

I chose this because it beautifully tells the story of this legacy of conquest, of the empires and colonialism and all the politics that go along with that. And also we know that the wars of this century are more than anything else going to be about resources, one of which is water. If you look at South Asia you can see that water is a huge part of that conflict. There is all the flooding in Pakistan today. The Indus is a life force for this country. It is the birthplace of what is now Pakistan. And Albinia’s book starts with Pakistan and follows the Indus all the way up to China and talks about not just the British Raj and its role in destroying the Indus delta but also as far back as Alexander the Great and his conquests and why his conquests were so successful.

During the past two thousand years a series of invaders – Alexander the Great, Afghan sultans, the British Raj – made conquering the Indus valley their quixotic mission. For the people of the river, meanwhile, the Indus valley became a nodal point on the Silk Road, a centre of Sufi pilgrimage and the birthplace of Sikhism. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five millennia of history redolent with contemporary importance.

You are obviously passionate about your country, but with all the unrest in Pakistan are you ever tempted to go and live somewhere else?

Oh, no, because I think if one looks at what is happening in Pakistan today with this position of endemic corruption of the state and the incredible incompetence of this country’s leaders, if I decided to get up and go, or we allow other people to tell our stories or raise our issues, or we are made to be silent, there is no future. But what gives me hope is books like these where people are speaking about this legacy of violence and the corruption of the state. So no, I am here to stay.

Interview by

Daisy Banks

Source:
http://fivebooks.com/interviews/fatima-bhutto-on-pakistan

An Evening with FATIMA BHUTTO

Tuesday, October 5, 7:30 pm
The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
$12 advance tickets: brownpapertickets.com t: 800-838-3006 or:
Pegasus Books, Pendragon, Mrs. Dalloway’s, Moe’s, Walden Pond,
DIESEL, A Bookstore, and Modern Times ($15 door/$7.50 HC members)

The Afghan born Pakistani poet and writer has written a revelatory account of her family’s dramatic role in shaping Pakistan. In 1996, Mir Murtaza Bhutto was murdered by Pakistani police outside the family home in Karachi. His daughter Fatima, just 14 years old, was at home when it happened. In December 2007, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Fatima’s aunt - and thewoman she had publicly accused of ordering her father’s murder - was assassinated In Rawalpindi. This was just the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world’s best-known political dynasties. The history of this unique family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself. It is the history of a nation from Partition through the struggle with India over Kashmir, the Cold War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and right up to the post 9/11 “war on terror.”

In SONGS OF BLOOD AND SWORD: A Daughter’s Memoir, Fatima Bhutto offers a heartbreaking and revelatory first-hand intimate account of the family that shaped Pakistan. Beyond the news value – with its startling claims about the culprit behindBhutto’s father’s death, vivid reporting about her aunt and uncle (now the President of Pakistan) – the book is a remarkable portrait of one of the most famous families in the world, and an insightful commentary on the political turmoil shaping the country.

Fatima Bhutto studied at Columbia University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Her work has appeared in The Daily Beast, New Statesman, and other publications. She was a featured panelist at the 2010 Daily Beast Women in the World Summit, and has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN, and in the pages of Marie Claire. She currently lives in Karachi.

Source: http://kpfa.org/events/evening-fatima-bhutto-presenting-%E2%80%9Csongs-blood-and-sword-daughter%E2%80%99s-memoir%E2%80%9D

FATIMA BHUTTO at Town Hall Seattle

Start: Sat, 10/02/2010 - 7:30pm

Presented by ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY in association with the GARDNER CENTER FOR ASIAN ART & IDEAS and SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. Early words here on two big nights happening early in October at Town Hall. First is this with Pakistani poet/journalist Fatima Bhutto here from her Karachi home with her searing, astonishing book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir (Nation Books). This is a "daughter's memoir" of both a family and a homeland, as Fatima Bhutto's family has been a central, indelible part of Pakistan's sixty-three turbulent years as an independent nation. Her grandfather, uncle, aunt (Benazir), and father Mir Murtaza were variously executed, murdered, and assassinated, as were numerous others who worked with or for them. The clarities and mysteries of these, and more, are told with a brave, bracing narrative voice. $10 tickets are available via www.brownpapertickets.com (1-800-838-3006) or at Elliott Bay Book Company starting September 1. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). We expect this evening to also address in various ways (discussion, relief efforts, financial support) the ongoing devastation in Pakistan owing to floods). As this goes to press, we're still awaiting word in this regard from Ms. Bhutto's publisher. Please check back on our website and/or our printed October schedule for more current information. Locally, the Pakistan Association of Greater Seattle (www.pakistanseattle.com) has a special website dedicated to flood relief efforts, www.floodrelief2010.com.

Location: 

Town Hall Seattle
1119 Eighth Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101


Source: http://www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/oct10/bhutto

Asia Society's Event on 24th Sept 2010

Fatima Bhutto: Songs Of Blood And Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir

                   

            
Date: Sept 24, 2010 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Location: New York


Type: Meet the Author


Event Policy & Public






In 1996 Mir Murtaza Bhutto was murdered by Pakistani police outside the family home in Karachi. His daughter, Fatima, was at home when it happened, just 14 years old. In 2007, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Fatima's aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father's murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. This was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best-known political dynasties. 

Fatima Bhutto offers a heartbreaking and revelatory first-hand account of the family that shaped Pakistan and whose history mirrors that of Pakistan itself. The quest to find the truth behind her father's murder has led Fatima Bhutto to the heart of her country's volatile political establishment. 

Fatima Bhutto is a poet and writer. Her work has appeared in The Daily Beast, New Statesman, and other publications. She was a featured panelist at 2010 Daily Beast "Women in the World" Summit, and has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, CNN, and in the pages of Marie Claire. She currently lives in Karachi. 

(Please note: Only books purchased at the event can be signed by Fatima Bhutto.) 

SHOP AsiaStore for Songs Of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto

You can book your tickets via http://asiasociety.org/events-calendar/fatima-bhutto-songs-blood-and-swo?page=2

Fall season of Allan Gregg in Conversation launches with new interviews, a special retrospective episode and a contest for booklovers

TORONTO, Sept. 7 /CNW/ - As a forum for today's foremost thinkers to discuss their most influential and provocative ideas, TVO's Allan Gregg in Conversation announces a new season full of enlightening conversations with renowned authors from around the world, and a contest based on the new shows.




In addition to new interviews, the fall season includes a one-hour retrospective of conversations Allan Gregg has had over the years with some of the world's most influential and interesting people. Airing Friday October 1 at 10 pm ET, the special includes excerpts from interviews with Jean Chrétien, Jimmy Carter, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Conrad Black, Naomi Klein, Richard Dawkins, Margaret MacMillan, Malcolm Gladwell and more.



Other highlights of the new season include:



Annie Leonard - Friday September 17 at 10 pm ET

Activist turned filmmaker Annie Leonard talks about her book The Story of Stuff, based on her travels around the globe tracking what happens to the stuff we produce, consume and throw away.

Fatima Bhutto - Friday September 24 at 10 pm ET

Fatima Bhutto, niece of the assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, talks about her memoir Songs of Blood and Sword. Her book is a firsthand account of the Bhutto family dynasty, whose tragic and violent story mirrors the history of modern Pakistan.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Friday October 8 at 10 pm ET

Ayaan Hirsi Ali discusses Nomad, the story of what happened after the Dutch director with whom she made a documentary about the domestic abuse of Muslim women was murdered by a radical Islamist, the death threats that forced her into hiding, and her bid to start a new life in America.

The Allan Gregg Contest launches along with the show's new season on Friday September 17, 2010. For four weeks, participants can watch a new episode of Allan Gregg in Conversation on TVO or online at tvo.org or TVO's YouTube page, and enter to win by answering a trivia question based on the content of the show. Each week, one lucky viewer will win a Sony Reader Pocket Edition and a signed copy of the author of the week's book.



Source: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2010/07/c7518.html

Fatima Bhutto is nominated for The Shakti Bhatt prize

It’s not about competing or not competing with the greats,” says Mridula Koshy, winner of the 2009 Shakti Bhatt Prize, about India’s only book prize for debut writers. “When you’re a new writer, it’s not that you’re necessarily an amateur — the need is for the newness of what you have to say to be recognised. It’s about recognising how literature evolves. So, for writers on the shortlist of this sort of prize, what it does is to allow writers to engage with readers, and — just as important — with other writers.” This year’s Shakti Bhatt Prize shortlist spotlights six writers across a wide range of genres — three first novels, two of them from Pakistan, the biography of one of the subcontinent’s most fiercely political families, a graphic novel set in the Delhi of the Emergency, and a mesmerising food-and-travel odyssey. With Mahesh Dattani, Kalpana Swaminathan and Ruchir Joshi as the judges, this promises to be closely fought. Shakti Bhatt, the talented and energetic editor who died tragically young, believed that good writing crosses genres and national boundaries — and this year’s shortlist more than delivers the goods for readers.

Home Boy, H M Naqvi (Random House)


H M Naqvi’s swaggering debut novel follows the (mis)fortunes of three young Pakistanis in the before-and-after world of 9/11 America. Their Wall Street jobs and comfortably cushioned lives fall apart in the wake of the terror attacks, and Naqvi chronicles all of this with flair and black humour. Perhaps the best thing about Home Boy is Naqvi’s ear for New York and immigrant accents, and his ability to shuttle with ease between the rhythms of Lahore life and the fast-paced, fluctuating and often brutal demands of Manhattan in an age of siege. Though Home Boy falters in its second half, this still remains an intelligent and sharply comic look at the politics of race and culture in today’s riven world.



Following Fish, Samanth Subramanian (Penguin India)


From the hilsa to the perfect toddy shop meen curry, Samanth Subramanian tracks down all of India’s greatest fish dishes. But it is much more than just a foodie memoir; it’s also an excursion into history, as he dives headfirst into the politics of overfishing in Goa, or the reason for the drop in the quality of hilsa. As he crisscrosses the states, inspecting the famous fish treatment for asthma in Andhra Pradesh, which involves the swallowing of a murrel fish, scouring Mumbai for Gomantak and Malvani cooking classics, Subramanian proves that he’s one of the best travel and food writers to come out of India in the last decade.


Songs of Blood and Sword, A Daughter’s Memoir, by Fatima Bhutto (Penguin Viking)


Fatima Bhutto’s chronicle of deaths foretold gains resonance from the turbulent circumstances of her life. Her father Murtaza and her aunt Benazir spent much of their political careers locked in a battle over the legacy of their father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Fatima believes that Benazir had “moral responsibility” for Murtaza’s death in a gun battle outside his home in 1996, and her autobiography is marked by the accounts of bloodshed, rivalry and bitter feuds. Bhutto is an often naïve but always intense narrator.



The Wish Maker, Ali Sethi (Penguin India)


This three-generation novel set in contemporary Pakistan is a TV soap opera masquerading as fiction — one reason for Sethi’s considerable popularity and high sales over the last year. The Wish Maker packs in the fever and fret of Partition, the Bangladesh War and weddings in contemporary Pakistan, all told with exuberance and gusto rather than craft and nuance. Despite its clichés, what makes Sethi’s book work for many is the ease of the writing and the familiarity of the stories he has to tell. Look for entertainment rather than insight.


Delhi Calm, Vishwajyoti Ghosh (HarperCollins)


The Emergency years have been captured by Indian writers from Rushdie to Rohinton Mistry before, but Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s attempt to set down those dark, turbulent times in graphic novel form is startlingly unusual. The graphic novel, with Ghosh’s stark, telling illustrations, is perfectly suited to examining the years when India gave up its freedoms. Delhi Calm suffers slightly from the lack of a great story — this is more a chronicle of the times than a true fictionalisation — but it works well for readers, especially those in the generation that grew up without painful, haunting memories of the years when the trains ran on time for all the wrong reasons.



The House on Mall Road, Mohyna Srinivasan (Penguin India)


Mohyna Srinivasan’s likeable debut novel follows the fortunes of an army brat, Parvati, as she attempts to unravel an old tragedy while discovering romance with a capital R. One of the charms of The House on Mall Road is its faithful excavation of army life, from the rituals of the Mess to the dangers and crippling inconveniences of life in the border areas of India, but this isn’t always enough. This is an uneven first novel — a pleasant and rewarding, but not extraordinary, read.



Source: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/nilanjana-s-roydebutantes%5C-ballshakti-bhatt-prize/407157/

Crossing the Line: Expressing Pakistan

Thursday 16 September, 6.30pm

Venue: Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA

In association with Granta and FLOW - The Free Word Festival

With almost 200 million people speaking nearly 60 languages, brought into nationhood under the auspices of a single religion, but wracked with deep separatist fissures and the destabilizing forces of ongoing conflicts in Iran, Afghanistan and Kashmir, Pakistan is one of the most dynamic places in the world today. In this panel discussion, writers featured in Granta magazine's Pakistan issue will read from their work and discuss the dynamics of expression in and out of Pakistan. Writers featured in this issue include Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Fatima Bhutto, Aamer Hussein, and Daniyal Mueenuddin. 

Tickets: Free, but booking essential.
How to Book: Call the Free Word Centre on 0207 3242 570 or visit www.freewordonline.com

Source: http://www.englishpen.org/events/penevents/crossingthelineexpressingpakistan/