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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I found this to be an odd, but entertaining book. It wasn't until after I finished it, that I discovered it's about real historical figures. I recommend the audiobook, with the caveat that it takes a hot minute to realize the POV shifts with the chapters. We have the first person perspective of Junior Under Office Ali Shigri and a third person narrator recording General Zia's activities.
“You want freedom and they give you chicken korma.”
I really liked the fact that all the distinct plot just ended up working together.
If the accident had really happened like that it would have been one hell of a karmic joke on the general :)
At times it felt like Ali Shigri was the Pakistani version of Yossarian from Catch-22 which is amazing.
Just look at this sentence:
“Uncle Starchy had the slow grace of a lifelong drug addict. He moved with such agility and sense of purpose that I joined in the search without knowing what we were looking for.”
Full review from Blog
Pakistan is a South Asian country whose neighbours include Afghanistan, Iran, India, China... And just reading those names alone can give you some idea what life is like there. I remember during my childhood hearing about this country on the news – wars and disputes with India about certain bordering areas, I remember words like bloodshed and atomic weapons…. Yeah, not fun memories.
I also heard about Pakistan while watching documentaries. Names like Mohenjo-daro, K2, Nanga Parbat, Kashmir, Khyber Pass and the Silk road always meant scenes of unimaginable beauty of the mountains and icebergs and terraced green hills.
Now, this book deals more with the Pakistan from the news reports than from the documentaries.
Just to give you a bit of a history background, here’s what the official records say about the events from the book:
General Zia replaced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the leader of Pakistan. While Bhutto was seen as an “aristocrat” (and not as the “Leader of the People), General Zia stated that he wanted to return the government to the people. This area of the world has a very long history of military leaders taking over the government, although today the prime minister is a former cricket player.
General Zia decided that the Muslim way of life should be used as a model for the reorganizing of Pakistan’s political system. He also placed Pakistan on the side of US in the Cold War (at that time, Afghanistan was the focus of the struggle between the two sided). Zia gave the people a semblance of democracy with the lifting of the martial law and elections (which his opposition called rigged), but then he would dismiss the government and the prime minister for “reeking of corruption” and he installed himself as the leader of the government.
General Zia boarded a plane in August 1988 (on which a crate of mangoes was loaded as well) and the plane crashed. The cause of the accident is still not known. And this is what this novel is about.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes delves into the many possible conspiracies that could have resulted in Zia’s death. Hanif tried to present all possible plots and sort of asks us to choose one that suits us best. And I loved that. There is a curse that is sent towards Zia through a crow. Throughout the novel the crow flies, and the closer it gets to the general, the more complicated the net of conspiracies gets. Possible causes for the accident in the novel include a tapeworm, a snake, a street cleaner, and our main protagonist officer in the Air Force, Ali Shigri.
The overall style reminded me of Catch-22, another strange but amazing novel. Just like in Heller’s novel, Hanif shows us the inevitability of conflict and the doomed attempts of the individual to achieve their simple goals when surrounded by giants of government and the military.
The novel is full of one-liners (I’ll show you some at the end), but there is also a side story, a side comment on the state of things in the 1980s Pakistan – the executions by stoning, the harsh Islamic law being imposed on the general population (but of course, no the ruling class), the torture chambers, the pointlessness of the military parades, the blatant “buying” of votes, America’s support of the Afghani mujahideen (which will later be to the detriment of the US)… Hanif, touches on all of these, but doesn’t dig any deeper under the surface, for which he was criticized by many book reviewers.
All in all, I loved this novel.
“He won’t stop the war until you give him the peace prize.”
“It is also a well-known fact that most curses don't work. The only way they can work is if a crow hears a curse from someone who has fed him to a full stomach and then carries it to the person who has been cursed. Crows, notoriously gluttonous, never feel as if their stomachs are full. They are also wayward creatures, their movement can never be predicted. They never bother carrying anything anywhere.”
"You can blame our men in uniform for anything, but you can never blame them for being imaginative."
"Roses are red. Violets are blue. This country is khaki."
I really liked the fact that all the distinct plot just ended up working together.
If the accident had really happened like that it would have been one hell of a karmic joke on the general :)
At times it felt like Ali Shigri was the Pakistani version of Yossarian from Catch-22 which is amazing.
Just look at this sentence:
“Uncle Starchy had the slow grace of a lifelong drug addict. He moved with such agility and sense of purpose that I joined in the search without knowing what we were looking for.”
Full review from Blog
Pakistan is a South Asian country whose neighbours include Afghanistan, Iran, India, China... And just reading those names alone can give you some idea what life is like there. I remember during my childhood hearing about this country on the news – wars and disputes with India about certain bordering areas, I remember words like bloodshed and atomic weapons…. Yeah, not fun memories.
I also heard about Pakistan while watching documentaries. Names like Mohenjo-daro, K2, Nanga Parbat, Kashmir, Khyber Pass and the Silk road always meant scenes of unimaginable beauty of the mountains and icebergs and terraced green hills.
Now, this book deals more with the Pakistan from the news reports than from the documentaries.
Just to give you a bit of a history background, here’s what the official records say about the events from the book:
General Zia replaced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the leader of Pakistan. While Bhutto was seen as an “aristocrat” (and not as the “Leader of the People), General Zia stated that he wanted to return the government to the people. This area of the world has a very long history of military leaders taking over the government, although today the prime minister is a former cricket player.
General Zia decided that the Muslim way of life should be used as a model for the reorganizing of Pakistan’s political system. He also placed Pakistan on the side of US in the Cold War (at that time, Afghanistan was the focus of the struggle between the two sided). Zia gave the people a semblance of democracy with the lifting of the martial law and elections (which his opposition called rigged), but then he would dismiss the government and the prime minister for “reeking of corruption” and he installed himself as the leader of the government.
General Zia boarded a plane in August 1988 (on which a crate of mangoes was loaded as well) and the plane crashed. The cause of the accident is still not known. And this is what this novel is about.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes delves into the many possible conspiracies that could have resulted in Zia’s death. Hanif tried to present all possible plots and sort of asks us to choose one that suits us best. And I loved that. There is a curse that is sent towards Zia through a crow. Throughout the novel the crow flies, and the closer it gets to the general, the more complicated the net of conspiracies gets. Possible causes for the accident in the novel include a tapeworm, a snake, a street cleaner, and our main protagonist officer in the Air Force, Ali Shigri.
The overall style reminded me of Catch-22, another strange but amazing novel. Just like in Heller’s novel, Hanif shows us the inevitability of conflict and the doomed attempts of the individual to achieve their simple goals when surrounded by giants of government and the military.
The novel is full of one-liners (I’ll show you some at the end), but there is also a side story, a side comment on the state of things in the 1980s Pakistan – the executions by stoning, the harsh Islamic law being imposed on the general population (but of course, no the ruling class), the torture chambers, the pointlessness of the military parades, the blatant “buying” of votes, America’s support of the Afghani mujahideen (which will later be to the detriment of the US)… Hanif, touches on all of these, but doesn’t dig any deeper under the surface, for which he was criticized by many book reviewers.
All in all, I loved this novel.
“He won’t stop the war until you give him the peace prize.”
“It is also a well-known fact that most curses don't work. The only way they can work is if a crow hears a curse from someone who has fed him to a full stomach and then carries it to the person who has been cursed. Crows, notoriously gluttonous, never feel as if their stomachs are full. They are also wayward creatures, their movement can never be predicted. They never bother carrying anything anywhere.”
"You can blame our men in uniform for anything, but you can never blame them for being imaginative."
"Roses are red. Violets are blue. This country is khaki."
Halfway through the book, yet to find anything to keep me going. Bleh.
The historical basis for A Case of Exploding Mangoes was not one I was familiar with, but you know how the story ends by the first chapter. Not one of my favourite plot devices, and I found it a bit hard to gain momentum with the story at first, but by the end it had pulled me in. There were characters I was immensely invested in (Brigadier TM and Zainab, I'm looking at you), and it was really interesting to see how everything came together in the last 100 pages.
"She didn't want her to go quietly."
"She didn't want her to go quietly."
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
funny
slow-paced
A wrily satirical story about Pakistan's leaders around the end of the Cold War, this was very entertaining (and perhaps informative, although difficult to know how much is fact and how much fiction). Hanif carries off deadpan satire brilliantly, and has an interesting technique of drip feeding information, particularly with regard to the main character's intentions.
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
This book has been on my to-read list for about a year now and I am stoked to finally be able to flip through the pages. To be honest, I don't particularly know what the story is about, but I know it will touch a little bit on Islam and Pakistan, so I'm just excited to find out how the story will go. Mohammed Hanif is also not a familiar name for me, therefore I have no expectations for the writing style and plot. In short, I dove into this book with an open mind.
At first, I couldn't really get into it as I'm not entirely sold on the military angle of a story and was expecting there to be a breakout from the whole barracks and platoons. However, unfortunately, I was mistaken. The story will not get too far from politics, militarism and all the plotting and crime that comes with it. That being said, the story starts to develop into a more interesting flow rather quickly. It introduces the conflict quite early on—which then opens layer upon layer of what should actually be revealed later on—that jogs our curiosity and gets our adrenaline pumping. The main character's dark history is also being introduced first in bits and pieces, in a way that makes us understand it rather slowly and create quite an impact. The author doesn't seem to indicate much on his personality until well into the book, so that we only know what he wants us to know, finding out only a lot later that he isn't who we may think he is.
What is really important to me: it is really funny! A beautiful satire that doesn't take most things seriously, everything can be a joke in a way that the characters involved don't even know it. Everything General Zia does, everything the military protocol dictates, everything the civilians decide to believe—literally everything can be a joke, without being too in-your-face about it. I also love how the author can give so much character to the historical figures, such as General Zia and his cronies. I wonder what kind of research he made to be able to do this. I wonder how much of such research he did. Or if he simply took an exaggerated view on every news and action involving the general back when he was alive and in power. But it is done so eloquently that you can see it in your local politicians of today. Maybe the kind of humour only an experienced journalist can have.
Unfortunately, I wish the author would have put in a devout Muslim—or any religious person, really—in there who doesn't like an utter lunatic, hypocrite or dictator. It makes me feel uncomfortable and, frankly, slightly offended that the only religious Muslim in this book seems to be General Zia, which also happens to be butt of every joke. It's kind of hard not to see the author trying to antagonise Islam, when our main character—and the rest of the protagonists—is an agnostic Muslim. While I find that may just be the author sticking to his belief—I'm not familiar with his belief system—I also feel that it strengthens the stereotype of religious people being stupid and/or ridiculous and/or cruel. But what do I know? I'm not even that devout myself.
All in all, I really enjoyed this book and would describe it as Scandal meets The Kite Runner meets Saturday Night Live. But, hey, that's just me.
At first, I couldn't really get into it as I'm not entirely sold on the military angle of a story and was expecting there to be a breakout from the whole barracks and platoons. However, unfortunately, I was mistaken. The story will not get too far from politics, militarism and all the plotting and crime that comes with it. That being said, the story starts to develop into a more interesting flow rather quickly. It introduces the conflict quite early on—which then opens layer upon layer of what should actually be revealed later on—that jogs our curiosity and gets our adrenaline pumping. The main character's dark history is also being introduced first in bits and pieces, in a way that makes us understand it rather slowly and create quite an impact. The author doesn't seem to indicate much on his personality until well into the book, so that we only know what he wants us to know, finding out only a lot later that he isn't who we may think he is.
What is really important to me: it is really funny! A beautiful satire that doesn't take most things seriously, everything can be a joke in a way that the characters involved don't even know it. Everything General Zia does, everything the military protocol dictates, everything the civilians decide to believe—literally everything can be a joke, without being too in-your-face about it. I also love how the author can give so much character to the historical figures, such as General Zia and his cronies. I wonder what kind of research he made to be able to do this. I wonder how much of such research he did. Or if he simply took an exaggerated view on every news and action involving the general back when he was alive and in power. But it is done so eloquently that you can see it in your local politicians of today. Maybe the kind of humour only an experienced journalist can have.
Unfortunately, I wish the author would have put in a devout Muslim—or any religious person, really—in there who doesn't like an utter lunatic, hypocrite or dictator. It makes me feel uncomfortable and, frankly, slightly offended that the only religious Muslim in this book seems to be General Zia, which also happens to be butt of every joke. It's kind of hard not to see the author trying to antagonise Islam, when our main character—and the rest of the protagonists—is an agnostic Muslim. While I find that may just be the author sticking to his belief—I'm not familiar with his belief system—I also feel that it strengthens the stereotype of religious people being stupid and/or ridiculous and/or cruel. But what do I know? I'm not even that devout myself.
All in all, I really enjoyed this book and would describe it as Scandal meets The Kite Runner meets Saturday Night Live. But, hey, that's just me.
Not sure I would agree that this book is "comic" but satirical, certainly. It was pretty good, though. A few unresolved threads, but still.