A decade on, the case is very different. Last year’s Booker shortlist contained a Pakistani writer for the first time, and an exceptionally talented one at that: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist was unquestionably one of the most witty, accomplished and thought-provoking novels of 2007; it received ecstatic reviews, and instantly became a New York Times bestseller and notable book. Now, within the next few months, a whole raft of Pakistani novels are due to appear, all of which have already caused considerable pre-publication stir in the publishing world.
Nadeem Aslam’s latest, The Wasted Vigil, is out shortly and is said to be even more observant and beautifully written than his wonderful Maps for Lost Lovers. Kamila Shamsie’s Burned Shadows, to be published in March 2009, is a narrative which moves its characters from Hiroshima to 9/11, and is also said to be much her strongest book to date. Next summer will also see the debut of two highly rated new novels by writers in their mid-twenties, one by Ali Sethi, nephew of Pakstani novelist Moni Mohsin, who was one of the unexpected stars of the last Jaipur Literature Festival; and the other a collection of tales by Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose short stories in the New Yorker have already been included by Salman Rushdie for Best American Short Stories and have also been nominated for a National Magazine Award. His remarkable debut, Nawabdin Electrician, can be read online at www.newyorker.com and reveals a writer who seems to combine the intimate rootedness and gentle humour of R.K. Narayan with the literary sophistication and stylishness of a Jhumpa Lahiri.
There has also been some remarkable non-fiction emerging from across the border: last year Zahid Hussain’s Frontline Pakistan and Ayesha Siddiqa’s Military Inc were both highly praised as insightful and revealing studies of their troubled country; this year Shuja Nawaz’s Crossed Swords and Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos look likely to be major international successes. The irony is that the same jihadi outrages and military interventions that have held Pakistan back so badly in its political life have provided an embarrassment of riches for its writers.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif is the first wave of this new Pakistani literary invasion to infiltrate Indian shelfspace this year. The book is something quite new in South Asian fiction: an entertaining and darkly comic political thriller which is also a thought-provoking satirical farce attacking the brutality, stupidity and hypocrisy of Pakistan’s military dictators. Rooted in Hanif’s own experiences, first as a Pakistani air force cadet, then as a political journalist—he is now head of the BBC Urdu service—the book demonstrates some of the virtues which are coming to distinguish new Pakistani writing. Like The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which it in some way resembles, it is intelligent, witty and street-smart without being narrowly urban or elitist; pacey and exciting without being sensational; and showing an enviable humour and lightness of touch without succumbing to the sub-magic realist tricksiness which blights so much new Indian fiction.
The plot of Exploding Mangoes revolves around the assassination of President Zia on 17th August 1988. Two narrative threads are artfully interwoven: one involving the narrator, Captain Ali Shigri, a young air force officer who is arrested and threatened with torture by the isi after the disappearance of his best friend and room mate in a stolen airforce plane; and the other involving a gloriously fictionalised General Zia. Hanif has great fun sketching in the despot’s growing paranoia and superstition, his desperate searching for guidance in randomly consulted passages from the Quran, his dreams of winning the Nobel Prize and problems with severe rectal itch, as well as his difficulties with his forceful Begum who suspects he is having an affair with a curvaceous Texan TV journalist.
The narrative, which starts slowly, soon picks up pace as the plot-twists cleverly unfold. In particular, the book is remarkable for its darkly comic wit: Hanif has clearly enjoyed himself writing this novel, and his pleasure is communicated to the reader, as he recalls a period of history when the Americans were doing all they could to support the jihadis in Afghanistan, and when the cia thought that arming and training Zia’s mad Islamists was a really clever ruse.
Highly praised by, among others, John Le Carre, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is quite unlike anything recently published this side of the border, and throws the gauntlet down to a new generation of Indian writers. For the first time in this part of Asia, there is now serious competition out there.
