Fatima Bhutto's debut to Viking

Viking is set to publish the debut novel from Fatima Bhutto, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon.

Mary Mount at Viking bought world rights excluding India from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. It has already been pre-empted in the USA by Andrea Walker at Penguin Press, and in Norway by Cathrine Bakke Bolin at Gyldendal.

The novel, which has also been sold in the US and Norway, takes place over the course of one morning, and follows three brothers living close to the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, and two women, Samarra and Mina who come into their lives.

Fatima Bhutto is part of a Pakistani political dynasty. Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was both prime minister and president of Pakistan, and her aunt Benazir Bhutto was prime minister twice before her assassination in 2007. Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is the current president of Pakistan.

In 2010, 30-year-old Bhutto published a memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape).

Source: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/fatima-bhuttos-debut-viking.html

News about Fatima Bhutto's Next Book

Via Twitter account of Publishers Week @PW_Deals

Andrea Walker at Penguin has preempted NA rights to Fatima Bhutto’s Pakistan-set novel "In the Shadow of the Crescent Moon."

Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid – review

Fatima Bhutto questions a study in which power has replaced the people and western narratives elbow out the real story

At the start of Pakistan on the Brink, Ahmed Rashid confesses that he didn't really want to write the book and that it was "forced" out of "a very reluctant author" by editors and publishers. To which one might uncharitably reply: we didn't want to read it either. The third book in a trilogy, following Taliban and Descent into Chaos, is a compendium of statistics, bomb counts and Wiki knowledge. If you've paid attention to the news during the past 12 years, you already know most of this.

It's also a little out of date. The killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the deadly attacks on Pakistan's naval and military bases over the past year, the rise of the Punjabi Taliban, and the murder of Afghan president Hamid Karzai's brother are only fleetingly described; the coming US elections are ignored and Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan last spring is given only a cursory glance.

But the book's central fault is that Rashid's teleology is dedicatedly western. And it is precisely this sort of thinking that got us into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place. There is no context that is not westernised for clarity (Bin Laden's retirement home of Abbottabad is like a "British country seat", a Pakistani military academy is a "West Point"). Rashid, whom his fellow Pakistani author Tariq Ali once called a "prize cock of the US defence establishment and videosphere", may have soured slightly in his views of the American government and its war in Afghanistan, but he still uses its language.

For Rashid the problem seems to be not that US and European troops are mired in a bloody, imperially designed and unwinnable war, but that there aren't enough of them to get the job done in good time. Only once is the conflict noticeably described in less than necessary terms, when Mullah Baradarof the Taliban is quoted as calling it a "game of colonisation". Rashid berates Obama for not "personalising" the war in Afghanistan and for not telling in any detail stories of Afghans and their plight. Yet he doesn't either. There's not one account of how people have suffered underOperation Enduring Freedom, merely statistics of doom.

Rashid made his name by bringing to light forgotten stories, but he has now become the story. The book's acknowledgments offer thanks to "all manner" of "bureaucrats, politicians and heads of state". Countless anecdotes begin with him advising the world's most powerful men on how to run their war (only for them to do the opposite). In his histories, power has replaced the people.

The chapter on the 2009 war in the Swat valley between the Pakistani army and Islamist militants is titled "A sliver of hope", but Rashid devotes hardly any space to the awful conditions 1.4 million internal refugees were held in after they had fled from the fighting. The UN called it "one of the world's worst displacement crises" and journalists, both international and local, were deliberately denied access. For Rashid, however, Pakistan gets an A grade for the war.

Pakistan and India are depicted one-dimensionally as paranoid powers unable to consider each other outside destructive paradigms – which indeed they might be, but their populations have long wanted peace, and are currently engaged in many hopeful people-to-people initiatives.

Sotto vocce, he tells us that anti-American sentiment in Pakistan is whipped up by the military and the nefarious Inter-Services Intelligence. According to Rashid, intelligence agencies manipulated the violent protests against Nato last November, following the airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers (and for which the Pentagon grudgingly expressed "deepest regret"). But the author fails to understand that after a 12-year war, diplomatic dealings that are a perpetual exercise in humiliation, and hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilian deaths at the hands of drones, the one thing the Pakistani army need not manipulate is anti-American sentiment. The US military, with its trigger-happy contractors and recent renegade shooters, Raymond Davis and Sgt Robert Bales, does a fine job of whipping that up all by itself.

At least, if belatedly, Rashid has cooled off in his affection for President Karzai. Gone are the days when he wrote articles entitled "How my friend outwitted the mullahs", as he did for the Daily Telegraph in 2001. Karzai, who has presided over gross corruption, factionalism and dashed hopes for Afghanistan for the past eight years, is finally described as he is: "increasingly paranoid" and "controversial". Rashid deserves credit, too, for going after Pakistan's villainous elite, often celebrated as the country's last hope.

Readers of his previous work will know that Rashid possesses a sophisticated understanding of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US, but here he offers disappointingly bite-sized analyses of places one would expect him to delve deeper into. On the decades-long secessionist insurgency in Balochistan, he references only a Human Rights Watch director called Brad: he doesn't speak to any Baloch groups or survivors of the army's campaign of violence. Karachi, Rashid surmises in a hurry, could easily be taken over by the Taliban "when they feel the time is right". Such foggy analysis is a betrayal of centuries of the city's syncretic, tolerant history, during which it has offered space to Christians, Hindus, Jews, Parsis and Sufis. We need to know more, but no nuance is available when an author is being pressed to complete a trilogy.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/27/pakistan-brink-ahmed-rashid-review?CMP=twt_gu

Write up on the One Young World event in Vanity Fair

Readers can save the picture format & zoom in to read the write up.

The Diary: Fatima Bhutto

The Pakistani author talks about a visit to Jaipur and learning from a younger brother

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8a4f45dc-50cb-11e1-ab40-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1m3ORn2fH

The Jaipur Quit Fest

The Jaipur Literature Festival — which has grown from a modest literary gathering to one of the world's most star-studded literary extravaganzas — was mired in controversy last week. Its organizers hoped to solidify its position as one of the world's premiere literary destinations by having Oprah Winfrey, among others, as a special guest. But Oprah's attendance was overshadowed by the events surrounding Salman Rushdie, who was forced to cancel his appearance at the Jaipur Lit Fest, as it is often called, when issues of his own safety were raised by police reports suggesting a gang from the Bombay underworld were coming to kill him.

The gangsters were thought to have been empowered by the protests against Rushdie's visit from students of the nearby Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic seminary which had asked the government to not grant the author a visa (incidentally, he didn't need one) as he had allegedly hurt religious sentiments of Muslims with his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. (In the end the gangsters, it seemed, were a figment of two Rajastani police officers' imagination, who, by choosing the path of least resistance, concocted the story into to frighten Rushdie into not coming.)

Further controversy followed when writers, wanting to express solidarity with Rushdie by reading from The Satanic Verses, were stopped doing so by festival organizers. One of those readers was Ruchir Joshi who has written a thoughtful, candid and angryaccount of his experience at the festival. Joshi suggested that the festival's organizers "were merely keen to get us troublemakers off the premises." Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar have also written accounts of their experience. (Lit fest organizers William Dalyrmple and Sanjoy Roy defend their actions here and here.)

The integrity of the festival — now reckoned to draw 50,000 people — and its long line of corporate sponsors, seemed to some observers of greater priority than both the principle of free expression and the defense of a writer and his book from angry people who in every likelihood have never read Rushdie's novel.

Oprah was also overshadowed by the appearance of Nation Books author Fatima Bhutto, whose discussion on Pakistan with historian and sociologist Ayesha Jalal drew as many, if not more, attendees than Oprah. (Watch the panel, moderated by Karan Thapar, with a cow in an adjacent lot mooing in chorus.)

But it was a panel moderated by Bhutto, "Writing and Resistance," that offered a poignant reminder of what a literary festival — beyond celebrity, beyond gossip, beyond self-congratulation — can and should do. It featured the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh, Burmese writer Thant Myint-U, and the Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani — all writers who have in one way or another confronted the brutality of state power — and explored the relationship between writing and activism.

Bhutto began the discussion by invoking these imperishable lines from Ryszard Kapuściński's 1982 book, Shah of Shahs:

All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process, sometimes accomplished in an instant like a shock or a lustration, demands illuminating. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.

Bhutto asked her panelists: Is that harassed man a constant in your writing?

The discussion that followed circled back to this question. It also examined these questions: Why is writing regarded as secondary to physical resistance? What kind of fraternity can exist between writers and the space of resistance? What is the role of a writer in a resistance movement (both Gilani and Shehadeh suggested that resistance movements without intellectual guidance can descend in to chaos).

At one moment Bhutto recounted Gilani's experience of having books by EM Forster confiscated by the Indian security forces and then paused and asked the panel, "What is so dangerous about books?" to which Gilani replied, "The danger is never in the book, only in the mind of the security people."

When asked about the similarities between resistance struggles across the world, Shehadeh suggested that it was a privilege for a writer to be involved in struggle because that experience allowed one to emphasize with struggle and suffering elsewhere.

A serious subject for discussion, but the mood was lightened by Gilani's witty accounts of cricket games played inside the Indian jail where he spent eight months in 2002 and his suggestion that all writers, perhaps, should spend some time in prison.

• Source: http://www.nationinstitute.org/blog/nationbooks/2576/the_jaipur_quit_fest/

Intelligence is sexy, period By Daily Post

SUKANT DEEPAK

No talking about her skin-hugging jeans or the lovely black boots. Not a whisper about the way her long fingers caress her hair and make you so glad to be alive the moment you’re in front of her.

“Why is your guy taking so many pictures?” she asks. You die. Why can’t there be a holy war against those who take her pictures?

Author Fatima Bhutto can easily overshadow anyone on the third day of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Oprah Winfey included. And she wants to talk serious. Only serious.

A young, intelligent woman like her in the Pakistani society which seems to be falling apart — rising inflation, starvation, an army which may take over anytime... Is something wrong in the state of Denmark? The celebrated author offers a fascinating smile, “It must be understood that in the Pakistani society, the gulf between those in power and the ones who are being ruled has been widening at an alarming rate, with the former choosing to be absolutely insensitive towards the issues concerning the masses. Do you know, millions are starving, there is a tremendous energy crisis. In my country, people stand on one side. Power stands on the other. Sad, but true.” But there must be a silver lining. “Of course there is, interesting things are happening. People are trying to make themselves heard. Judiciary is waking up. However, the real issue still remains — people. Read the newspaper headlines in Pakistan; they all scream of who will get the power. Why do we fail to understand that power doesn’t ‘belong’ to anyone. It is very complex phenomenon.”

Mention the never-before role being played by the civil society in Asia in recent times, like Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption in India, and the lawyers’ protest in Pakistan, and Fatima is quick to respond, “Who is the civil society? Do you know that most people in Pakistan may not even know about the protests being held, thanks to the fact that there isn’t enough electricity to feed their television. And also, why do we take only Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi into consideration while talking about Pakistan? Again, the issue of ever-growing gulf emerges. The most important issues including food, health, land reforms, energy aren’t taken up by the civil society. The problems being faced by far-fetched parts of the country are being ignored. Why aren’t we being sensitive to the needs of the majority? It’s so surprising!”

Now they say that for young Pakistani, India is no longer the enemy… “Yes, America tops the list. That’s because their occupation of Afganisthan is illegal and unjust. The drone attacks inside Pakistani territory are testing our patience like never before. I really wonder how many more Pakistani soldiers will need to be sacrificed at the American hands for us to realise that we don’t need them.”

As an educated young woman, does she feel that feudalism, still a dormant part in the Pakistani society also has a lot to do with the present-day chaos in Pakistani, though she also belongs to a huge landed family. “Sure, it is one of the factors, but then in every sphere- be it the industry, political power or any other institution, only a handful have all the power in that country.”

She has already made it clear that she would not join politics but remain a “critic”. So, how does she perceive the rise in former cricketer Imran Khan’s popularity? “Yes, he does have a personality. The question is whether he’s any different from the other politicians? The guy has always made it clear that he’s pretty cozy with dictatorship. He supported Zia, he has defended Musharraf. And yes, as a woman, I will worry if he comes to power. If you know, he has voted against the woman’s bill and his views with regard to the fairer sex are very orthodox. Don’t forget, that in 2009, he voiced that he was in favour of the Shria law.”

Bring up Kashmir, and she’s quick to respond, “It would not be fair to comment on this issue as there is no Kashmiri in attendance…”

Signing an autograph for a Canadian fan, she whispers, “Also, don’t you think internal borders restrict us to a great extent…?”

Source:http://www.dailypostindia.com/news/10234-intelligence-is-sexy-period.html

Voices from Pakistan: Controversial author Fatima Bhutto speaks out about India's western neighbour By ROHAN VENKATARAMAKRISHNAN

Oprah might have been the big attraction at Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, but a few metres away a packed house got a glimpse of two famous visitors from across the LoC.

Controversial Pakistani author (and Benazir Bhutto's niece) Fatima Bhutto and renowned historian Ayesha Jalal spoke about the complex dynamics of India's ever-turbulent western neighbour at a panel featuring a huge audience - and a very vocal cow.

'A nod of agreement from a cow,' said panel moderator and television talk show host Karan Thapar, after a loud 'moo' interrupted Bhutto's assertion about the immense gulf that separates the powerful and the ordinary in Pakistan. 'That's a very holy thing in India.'

The cow would make itself heard a few more times after the first 'moo,' particularly joining in with the audience's loud applause when Bhutto made clear her distaste over the rise in popularity of another Pakistani who is well-known on this side of the border.

'Is he (Imran Khan) a saviour?' Bhutto asked and answered her rhetorical question, to sustained applause, with a 'No, I don't think so.' She listed a number of strikes against the World Cup-winning playboy cricketer-turned-politician whose anti-establishment message has been gaining tremendous popularity.

'As a woman, I worry very much about Imran's politics. I worry about a person who voted against the Women's Bill in 2006,' Bhutto said, informing the audience about the legislation that attempted to amend - to some extent - a Pakistani law that holds rape victims guilty of adultery.

She questioned Imran's credentials as a genuine alternative to the current political class, saying he didn't seem to be any different from the pro-Army, pro-Islamist characters who dominate Pakistani politics. On a lighter note, she also critiqued the effect the former cricketer is having on the country's punditry.

'We've got this enormous country with so much in it, and we only seem to be able to talk in cricket metaphors,' Bhutto said to laughs. 'It's embarrassing.'

The problem with Pakistan, for Bhutto, is that the political class is too far removed from the issues that affect people on the ground - the lack of food, devastating floods and the conspicuous absence of energy distribution.

Jalal, who teaches South Asian history at Tufts University, agreed. She pointed out that despite Khan's apparently unending support, his party had already began making compromises by accepting politicians who didn't share his outsider status.

'I don't see a major change. What we see is parliamentarians and politicians seeing him (Imran Khan) as the horse to bet on,' Jalal said. 'Which will hurt Imran. It will tie his hands.'

As an alternative, Jalal suggested that Bhutto could get into the political game. 'Fati can join a party. I will join her,' Jalal said, before Bhutto interjected saying she wouldn't do that.

'The difference between Pakistan and India is in terms of structures and institutions,' Jalal said. 'India has institutions that function. In Pakistan, the only institution that functions is the army. What you're witnessing now is that uncertainty because change is in the air. Still, I think that the army will continue to be the final arbiter for years to come.' It was grim thought to carry back home.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2090367/Voices-Pakistan-Controversial-author-Fatima-Bhutto-speaks-Indias-western-neighbour.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

'Chasm Between Pak Commoners and Elites Growing'

One of Pakistan's leading young voices and estranged scion of the Bhutto family, Fatima Bhutto today lamented the fact that the chasm between the people of her country and those in power was widening by the day.

Speaking at a session to discuss Pakistan and its burning issues, Bhutto said while there is a huge gulf between the two sides of Pakistan, the people in power had little compassion for those they are supposed to take care of.

"There are two separate sets of people. One side is the common people and the other side is those who are in power," Fatima said.

"While millions are starving in Pakistan despite the fact that it is an agricultural country, there is disconnection between people and those in power," she said.

On the civil society in Pakistan, Fatima said while Pakistan was not new to street protests and movements, the basic problems of people had not been addressed.

"Still a larger section of society lack electricity and other basic needs," she said.

Comparing the institution of civil society in India and Pakistan, academic and author Ayesha Jalal said civil society in India was much better prepared to take to the streets.

She said energy crisis, food security and non-performing institutions were the major issues of concern there and these needs to be highlighted.

Jalal said while Pakistan is a society undergoing change, the Army is still likely to remain a dominant institution in the near future.

Source: http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=748634#.TxzGtBv_dIQ.twitter

Days of military rule over in Pak: Fatima Bhutto

Jaipur: Allaying any fear of military coup, Fatima Bhutto said that the days of army rule in Pakistan is over now. “In the eyes of most Pakistanis, army is discredited, especially after the Abbottabad incident where Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed under the nose of the army by American soldiers. Moreover, army support to Americans in Afghanistan has not gone well with the average Pakistanis,” said Bhutto, attending the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday.

Talking to Karan Thapar, another panelist Ayesha Jalal said that Pakistan army will continue to play an important role in the decades to come and it will be the final arbitrator in running the government. On Pakistan army’s need over US, she said that it’s the army which is most dependent on Americans. “But any action against the Haqqani network by Pakistan army is very unlikely,” she stressed.

On the growing popularity of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, Bhutto said that the emergence of Khan has once again demonstrated the personality-based politics in the country. Rubbishing the theory that Khan is the future of country, she said that he could not be a saviour of Pakistan. His coziness with military and his defence of General Zia-ul-Haq’s legacy are well known to every one, added she.

Jalal said that though Khan has been plausibly projected as a good leader, he lacks organisational base.

Source:http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/RAJ-JPR-days-of-military-rule-over-in-pak-fatima-bhutto-2781214.html

Fatima Bhutto Blasts Imran Khan

There was a short-lived rumor last month that Fatima Bhutto was flirting with the idea of joining Imran Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, she made it clear this was unlikely to happen. Ever.

More In Jaipur Literature Festival

• Five Tips on How to Write Biographies
• Fatima Bhutto Blasts Imran Khan
• Trying to Glimpse Oprah in Jaipur
• Shriver on Why TV Works Best for Novels
• My Incredibly Difficult, Serious Day at Jaipur

“He has an incredible coziness not with the military but with dictatorship,” Ms. Bhutto said of Mr. Khan, a cricket legend-turned-politician who has been billing himself as the face of change in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto accused Mr. Khan of defending the legacy of former dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who came to power in the late 1970s after overthrowing Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fatima’s grandfather and the founder of the country’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party. She also mentioned Mr. Khan’s support for a 2002 referendum allowing Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power with a coup a few years earlier, to extend his term.

That’s not where it ended. In what appeared to be a well-rehearsed argument to debunk the political credibility of the former cricket captain, Ms. Bhutto went on to list more reasons why she opposed his political foray.

“As a woman I worry very much about Imran’s politics,” said Ms. Bhutto. She spoke of his opposition to amending a 2006 woman’s bill in favor of victims of rape. She also questioned Mr. Khan’s commitment to secularism and to defending minorities.

“Is he a savior? No, I don’t think so,” said Ms. Bhutto during a Pakistan-focused session at the literary festival.

“Well, that’s the end of Imran Khan,” said news anchor Karan Thapar, who moderated the panel.

Mr. Khan’s political weight, long dismissed as irrelevant, started to gain new relevance in recent months.

Although he started his party more than 15 years ago, only now is it starting to gain traction. On Christmas Day, over 100,000 people turned up to his rally in Karachi, where he vowed to stand up to the U.S. and to fight corruption.

In October, he drew an even larger crowd in Lahore, leaving some wondering whether the next general elections, slated for 2013, may “mark the moment that PTI went from being ridiculous to respectable in the mainstream,” as an article in The Caravan magazine recently noted.

Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Fatima Bhutto at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong on March 3, 2008.

At the literary festival, where Ms. Bhutto shared a stage with the Pakistani-American historian Ayesha Jalal, the tone was one of disillusionment with Pakistan’s political class. Ms. Bhutto spoke of the “gulf” that exists between the people in power and the rest of the country, saying that food scarcity – not squabbles between institutions – is the bigger worry for most people.

Despite her political lineage (another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was her aunt), Ms. Bhutto has long eschewed direct involvement in national politics. Best known as a writer and a journalist, Ms. Bhutto hasn’t spared members of her family in her political critiques. Her “Songs of Blood and Swords,” a 2010 memoir centered on the Bhutto dynasty, exposedfeuding in her family and was damning of her late aunt.

Spokespersons of Mr. Khan’s PTI party did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Attempts to reach Mr. Khan or his spokespersons by phone were unsuccessful.

Source:http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/01/22/fatima-bhutto-blasts-imran-khan/?mod=google_news_blog

Fatima Bhutto [The Outlier]

Born into one of Pakistan’s most influential political dynasties, Fatima Bhutto is the granddaughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, but she has emerged as a political powerhouse in her own right. An author, journalist and poet, Fatima Bhutto’s rise to prominence began with the publication of her first book, a collection of poems, titled Whispers of the Desert. Her book titled 8.50 a.m. 8th October 2005 records those affected by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. She is a tenacious supporter of democracy, critical of the birthright policies of her late aunt’s “Bhutto cult,” and her latest book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, recounts the tumultuous history of the Bhutto family.

Describe your personality in 10 words or less.
Loyal.

If you were reincarnated, who or what would you like to come back as?
I’m not sure it works that way; I don’t think you get to choose.

Name your favorite …
Contemporary musician : This is entirely mood dependent. At this very moment I’m listening to Beirut.
Comfort food : Arabic food, all of it.
Wild animal : dolphin
Instrument : drums, only because I imagine I might be able to learn how to play them.
Founding Father : I’m afraid I don’t have one of those. Do you mean to suggest most people do?

What do you consider your greatest professional accomplishment?
My work ethic.

What are you pissed about right now?
Pakistan’s continuing flood crisis. The country has been inundated by rainwater for the second year running thanks to gross political mismanagement and corruption. In Sindh, 5 million people are still suffering the effects of the flood — some three months after the monsoons — and are homeless, without access to medical aidand food. (http://www.merlinusa.org provides medical relief to conflict zones around the world. If you’re interested please look it up and support its relief efforts in Pakistan)

What tunes would be on the five-song playlist to your life?
I couldn’t even give you the play list to last week. It changes constantly. But this week there would be a bit of Otis Redding, a little Dolly Parton, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Kanye West. And I’m also listening to a charming Pakistani punk band, The Kominas, this week, too.

What is your greatest fear?
That people have already become complacent about Pakistan. That Pakistan’s corruption doesn’t bother anyone anymore, regardless of its effects.

Who is the most interesting person you have ever met (and why)?
Professor Dennis Dalton. He taught me political theory in college and changed how I saw the world. His book on Mahatma Gandhi should be on every shelf.

Name three things you cannot live without.
Books. I can live without most other things.

You get one wish …
Justice.

Source: http://www.malibumag.com/site/article/fatima_bhutto_the_outlier/

In conversation with Fatima Bhutto

Home > Interests > Culture
Amean J




Condé Nast Traveller contributing editor and author Fatima Bhutto picks her favourite authors, countries and the literary festivals worth travelling to

Tell us a bit about yourself and what shaped your journey into writing.
It's what I always wanted to do. It’s a journey that's constantly being shaped. As JG Ballard once said "If I don't write I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.” I’m currently working on a book on Karachi.

How would you describe your city?
It's a mad city, a mega city, a monster city; that’s filled to the brim with people (no one really knows how many - between 16 and 18 million) and sits on the shores of the Arabian Sea. It's where political battles are fought and lost, often violently. It's an uncensored city – liberal, diverse, complicated which makes it the sort of atmosphere that easily inspires joy and fear, usually at the same time.

What are you expecting at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2012?
I’m looking forward to great audiences and compelling authors, which Jaipur does exceedingly well. I'm terribly excited about Ariel Dorfman, Richard Dawkins, Jamaica Kincaid, Hanan al Shaykh all being in Jaipur.

Who are some of the authors who have had a profound influence on you?
This changes constantly, but currently – Joan Didion, VS Naipaul, Rsyzard Kapucinski.
DID SHE SAY WHY?

Which book are you currently reading?
I’m reading George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London. But anyone who hasn't read Oblivion by Hector Abad must – really – and go find it. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Do you see Asian authors now having a greater influence on the world?
Certainly. But haven't Asian authors always had a profound literary influence? Rabindranath Tagore, Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and there are so many others like them.

A country you most enjoyed travelling in?
It's really hard to beat Cuba. Really,really hard.

Your favourite Indian destination is?
I have yet to visit a part of the country I didn't immediately decide was a new favourite. My most recent though is Kovalam.

Your recommendation for a not-to-be-missed literary festival would be?
I'm not sure there's a city in the world without a literary festival now so you're really spoilt for choice. Ubud has an extraordinary festival - I'd have to say it's my favourite.
Condé Nast Traveller contributing editor and author Fatima Bhutto picks her favourite authors, countries and the literary festivals worth travelling to

Tell us a bit about yourself and what shaped your journey into writing.
It's what I always wanted to do. It’s a journey that's constantly being shaped. As JG Ballard once said "If I don't write I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.” I’m currently working on a book on Karachi.

How would you describe your city?
It's a mad city, a mega city, a monster city; that’s filled to the brim with people (no one really knows how many - between 16 and 18 million) and sits on the shores of the Arabian Sea. It's where political battles are fought and lost, often violently. It's an uncensored city – liberal, diverse, complicated which makes it the sort of atmosphere that easily inspires joy and fear, usually at the same time.

What are you expecting at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2012?
I’m looking forward to great audiences and compelling authors, which Jaipur does exceedingly well. I'm terribly excited about Ariel Dorfman, Richard Dawkins, Jamaica Kincaid, Hanan al Shaykh all being in Jaipur.

Who are some of the authors who have had a profound influence on you?
This changes constantly, but currently – Joan Didion, VS Naipaul, Rsyzard Kapucinski.

Which book are you currently reading?
I’m reading George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London. But anyone who hasn't read Oblivion by Hector Abad must – really – and go find it. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Do you see Asian authors now having a greater influence on the world?
Certainly. But haven't Asian authors always had a profound literary influence? Rabindranath Tagore, Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and there are so many others like them.

A country you most enjoyed travelling in?
It's really hard to beat Cuba. Really,really hard.

Your favourite Indian destination is?
I have yet to visit a part of the country I didn't immediately decide was a new favourite. My most recent though is Kovalam.

Your recommendation for a not-to-be-missed literary festival would be?
I'm not sure there's a city in the world without a literary festival now so you're really spoilt for choice. Ubud has an extraordinary festival - I'd have to say it's my favourite.


Source:
http://www.cntraveller.in/content/conversation-fatima-bhutto

JANINE DI GIOVANNI TALKS TO FATIMA BHUTTO

Ghosts by Daylight, the latest book by award-winning foreign correspondent and war reporter Janine di Giovanni, is a memoir about war and the sharp edges of ordinary life – dealing with addiction, the pain of miscarriages, replacing one set of challenges with a different sort. For di Giovanni, who constantly follows stories that other journalists are too afraid to cover, from Rwanda to Algeria to the Balkans, travelling to report on the second Palestinian intifada while pregnant isn't necessarily as trying as giving birth in a Parisian hospital.

Fatima Bhutto: East Timor, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan – what separates war zones for you?
Janine di Giovanni: There are no separations... meaning human misery is human misery, whether it is in Asia or Africa. But there are places in the world where I’ve reported that are closer to my heart, for whatever reason. Some places you feel utterly powerless to do anything – that is beyond frustrating.

FB: I mean, how does one leave Grozny behind when Tripoli is the next port of call, or is that impossible?
JDG: I think it's impossible. You don't forget people or images. They haunt you. For instance, in Sierra Leone I once saw a six-month-old baby who had been amputated by the RUF rebels so that she – and all the people amputated – would be grotesque reminders of their power and to instil fear. I see that child in my dreams at least once a month. Sometimes I respond to places less than others. Afghanistan never got under my skin the way it does for others. I think because the treatment of women is still so horrific, the abuse of children... even among the educated classes.

FB: How did you balance the difficulties of writing about the “sharp edges” of normal life in Ghosts by Daylight while living them?
JDG: It was a very, very hard book to write, for many reasons. Mainly because the characters who are the central ones are still alive – my mother, my friends, my husband. And it was writing about real pain and suffering, but this time my own. I felt very vulnerable exposing myself but at the same time I knew it was a part of healing, not just for me, but for other people who are spouses of alcoholics or who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). After I finished it, people who know me very well, my closest friends, wrote to say, “Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you ask for help? We were here for you.” But I kept it very quiet. On many levels, I just don't tell people things about myself, I internalise a lot – on every level – stress, pain, suffering. The only thing I am very open about is love. When I love someone, I really love them. And I tell them. A lot.

FB: Where were you when you thought, “That's it – this is my last war?”
JDG: Well, for sure I thought I would die in Chechnya. So I wondered whether I would ever walk out of that country alive, let alone cover another war. I think the moment passes; you almost forget what you were feeling and then there is the terrible pull of going back to a place like Somalia or Zimbabwe, where you think there is darkness and you want to give a voice to people who have none. I have been frightened many times. But you forget it, the same way you forget the agonising pain of childbirth.

FB: Bosnia changed all the journalists who lived through it. You recently wrote an essay for Granta about returning to Bosnia and searching for a young boy, Nusrat, you met there. How do you carry Bosnia with you today?
JDG: It is in the face of the little boy I love most in the world, my son, Luca. He is seven, and I met his father there in 1993. If that meeting never happened, that life would not come to be. But aside from the personal reasons, I feel that country pulled me into its vortex – I fell in love, deeply, with this wounded place and I felt so much the horror and the injustice that happened there. I was completely and utterly gutted that the carnage and suffering people endured could have and should have been stopped. Let’s just say I did not emerge the same person I was when I first landed there in 1992. It changed me.

FB: You write about the first “real” death you saw, in Bosnia, and the autopilot mechanism it produced in you. About not knowing how many dead bodies you'd seen over the course of reporting from places like Rwanda and Sierra Leone. How does that sort of mechanism evolve the more wars you live through and the more violence you witness?
JDG: The French psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, who has done extensive studies on resilience (and who himself survived losing both his parents in the war), says that the people who survive such things just have an innate button that they push in order to keep their souls intact. I have no idea, but I do know I managed to stay sane on some level and I saw plenty of my friends and colleagues go down. I’m not stronger than them, I just think some people have more resilience in their make-up than others...

FB: Does the new sanitised language of war still allow you to do what it was that made you set out to become a journalist in the first place – giving a voice to people who had none?
JDG: I am just not built to be told where to go, what to write, what to look at. 
I don't respond well to authority. I grew up in the 1970s, the “question authority” generation. And I think journalism has definitely suffered. Compare what was written in Vietnam by reporters such as Gloria Emerson or David Halberstam to the reporting that came out of Iraq. Just not the same quality.
FB: Which newspapers do you read when at home in Paris?
JDG: I read le Figaro and le Parisien, because I get them free at the gym. I don't watch TV but will check the 8pm news on France 2 and occasionally CNN and the BBC. I listen to the radio, France Info, and I check the BBC website. But I am not 
a news junkie any more.

FB: General Patton said that the object of war isn't to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. How has new technology, epitomised by American drone attacks, changed the nature of war?
JDG: What a terrible line. I am not sure war is worth the loss of a single life. I think technology has moved us so far militarily that we seem to have disassociated the victims. Drones are nearly freakish, science fiction-like vehicles operated by someone back in Arizona who has no clue what life is like on the ground. I remember reporting from a remote village, a wedding party in Afghanistan that had gotten bombed “accidentally” and finding pieces of people's lives scattered everywhere – their bloody clothes, the food they were eating, the smashed house. And the few living just sobbing, grabbing my arm and asking, “Why?”

FB: Why do some people escape PTSD while others are consumed by it? 
Your husband Bruno's trauma from covering wars as a photojournalist was of a different form than yours. Is it the peculiarities of how one witnesses that kind of violence?
JDG: They say it's genetic, like alcoholism. They also say that you do not get it until you have a second jarring trauma – then the memories of the first come back. I am a great believer in old-fashioned Woody Allen-style therapy. It’s painful, it goes 
on forever, it hurts like hell, it makes you feel worse before you feel better – but 
it works. But you have to stick with it, and you have to be honest. Personally, 
I have been tested relentlessly and thought I did not have it. Now, looking back over my reaction after the traumatic birth of my son, I think I might have. I mean, 
I behaved like a madwoman hoarding water and medicine and afraid people on the street were going to harm me and my baby... But I would never put myself in 
the same boat as someone in Srebrenica or Kigali who saw their family massacred.

FB: Where to next? Martha Gellhorn said she didn't write, she just wandered about. But she also wrote of this almost obsessive need to follow war wherever she could reach it. Which one is it for you?
JDG: At the moment, I would like to get to northern Kenya and Mogadishu to report on the famine. I can't believe I am seeing the same images from nearly 20 years ago – 1992 – that some of my friends took, and they are taking the exact same ones right now. Don’t we ever learn anything from history?

Ghosts by Daylight is out now, published by Bloomsbury Press.
janinedigiovanni.com


Source: http://www.tankmagazine.com/issue-53/talk/janine-di-giovanni.aspx

Fatima Bhutto has guts

The Bhuttofamilie is the most powerful political dynasty in Pakistan. Fatima Bhutto is averse to. "My uncle, President Asif Ali Zardari, is a criminal, liar and murderer."

Fatima Bhutto (29), the headstrong niece of the 2007 assassinated Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, the current president, is "an unguided missile". Say the friends of the president. Fatima late in her columns for The Daily Beast and including New Statesman, blogs and any chance go to the corrupt practices of her uncle revealed to.

"Fatima has guts," says Zubair Areesh (24), leader and guitarist of the popular pop group in Lahore Rizer, enthusiastically. "Our leaders shamelessly filling their pockets, dancing to the tune of America, do not care to poverty. Look at the floods in the south. Again, thousands of people displaced from their homes.Fatima would have to go into politics. " The three remaining band members, dressed in jeans and their hair stiff with gel, nodding furiously along. | Photo: Dutch Height

Pakistani Kennedys

In the family house of Bhutto in Karachi, once by her famous grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto designed laughs in New York and London trained Fatima to thank her fans. Once it was her grandfather, one of the most charismatic leaders in Pakistan's history, at the head of the Bhutto dynasty. The most powerful political family in the country, because the chain of doom and disaster that struck them, the Pakistani named Kennedy.

But just as averse as she is of her corrupt family, so she is averse to the political dynasty. "A dynasty is against change, excludes others outside the political process and makes people apathetic. Pakistan is the land of the silent majority has become. While we are on the streets en masse should go. "

Fatima Bhutto fights passionately the one-dimensional image in the West Pakistani youth there. "Most of the youth is liberal and peaceful." The U.S. war on terrorism after the attacks in New York in part on Pakistani territory served, and the widespread corruption in American aid money intended for the economic crisis, floating in her hopeless youth in the arms of the Taliban.

The brighter cousin Benazir President Zardari in the media for criminal, liar and murderer belongs, the more support she receives her blogs. She plays the voice of young people, now more than half the Pakistani population.

For every business deal would be a fixed percentage claiming Zardari. "When his wife, my aunt, Benazir was prime minister the first time, he was known as" Mr. 10 Percent ". During her second reign, he was upgraded to "Mr. 50 Percent".Since he is in power, we call him 'Mr. 110 Percent ". The New York Times, the couple would Benazir-Asif 2 to $ 3 million cash are diverted.

Before this former Playboy came to power in 2008, there were cases of corruption against him in Switzerland, Spain and England, and was in his own country accused of four murders. According to Fatima, he also had a hand in the murder of his brother, her father, in 1996. "Among the corruption in Pakistan Zardari has reached epidemic proportions," said Zardari Fatima.Ook muilkorft the press more and more. Any journalist who ridicules the president, risking the cell. Regularly go Facebook, YouTube and Google on black.

Apple and egg

But Fatima does more than just her uncle nailed to the pillory. In the slums of Karachi, she tools up for the poor. In the women's prisons brings them regularly used computers.

They still believe in Pakistan. Stability in the country turns its eyes back until the Americans withdraw from Afghanistan. The bombing militants to operate off extremism. U.S. aid crane can also be closed better, according to Fatima disappears 70 percent. "The international business community to invest in Pakistan. We need jobs. So the desperate youth, now for a song blow up from the street. "

This is a translation from a dutch source : http://www.depers.nl/economie/614966/Fatima-heeft-lef.html