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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
Not sure I would agree that this book is "comic" but satirical, certainly. It was pretty good, though. A few unresolved threads, but still.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I'm definitely unfamiliar with the cultural and historical context, so that might have impacted my understanding of the text, but there were definitely passages/scenes that stood out to me!
If everyone is trying to kill him, who killed Pakistan’s President Zia Muhammad Al-Haq? Was it someone on his cabinet, a foreign power or an Air Force cadet, Ali Shigri ? This is a creative take on history which cannot be put down. It is witty and entertaining, with flawed characters making it more human and relatable.
This book has mouldered at the #1 spot on my to-read list for four years. It exited in that unhappy limbo of not being available from the library yet not being exciting enough to make me want to buy it. Since moving to England, I’ve started trying to work my way through the oldest books on my list, so I gave in and bought this cheaply. It’s hard to remember why I wanted to read it in the first place—I think I saw it at the bookstore, thought it was interesting, but tried to exercise some self-control and not buy it.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes takes place during a period of time about which I have little knowledge: the late half of the twentieth century. Actually, it’s set a year before my birth. I enjoy reading historical fiction from this period, precisely because I like learning more about the events that preceded me. Mohammed Hanif weaves two parallel narratives. Ali Shigri is the son of a famous, now deceased, officer in the Pakistan Army, and he has a plan to kill the President, General Zia. The second half of the story follows Zia himself, with brief interludes that expose the perspectives of the First Lady and Zia’s right- and left-hand men. Everything builds towards a final, climactic chapter in which Zia boards a booby-trapped plane, gets poisoned, and suffers from a tapeworm eating his internal organs. Yeah. It’s intense.
This book took me longer to read than it should have. It took me longer to appreciate than I would have liked. Trouble is, Hanif takes a while to show us what’s so fascinating about these characters. At first glance, Ali is a self-entitled, somewhat cocky young man who thinks he has it all figured out. At first glance, Zia is a slightly crazy military dictator with pretensions of piety. But rather than being humourous, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is mediocre at first.
Thankfully, it doesn’t stay mediocre. As the story develops, Ali and Zia’s stories become more fascinating—Zia’s in particular. I found myself yearning to learn what crazy decision Zia would make next. I was less enthralled with Ali’s arc, but I still wanted to find out what would happen to him, and how he ended up nearly on the same plane as General Zia.
In both stories, the principal themes are ones of isolation and meditation upon corruption. Pakistan, barely 40 years into its existence, groans beneath the military bureaucracy driving the country forward. Ali is trapped within a system just as oppressive as the Soviet government against which Pakistan fights. Zia, despite being the leader of that system, is trapped by it as well. At one point he attempts to go among his people in disguise, and his sojourn is an epic fail. He barely makes it out of the gates of his compound before running into trouble.
In Ali’s case, he is isolated by his role as a cadet in Pakistan’s army. He is disconnected from his past as a peasant growing up in the hills, something reminded to him by fellow prisoner the Secretary-General. Since following his father’s footsteps, Ali has become the sort of person who shouts at “strength 5”, practises silent drills, and salutes on command. The Secretary-General accuses him of “selling out” and collaborating. Ali denies this vociferously, and to some extent I’d side with him—he is planning to kill General Zia, after all. Nevertheless, there’s a definite sense that he has lived outside the sphere of reality too long, firmly ensconced in the denial of the military.
Similarly, Zia is in the ineviable position of being so powerful that no one wants to tell him the truth. Everyone feeds him the information they think will make him happy. His intelligence service and propaganda puppets spread paranoid conspiracy theories whenever they feel the need to discredit the latest attacks against him. I also love how Hanif portrays the corrupt and complicated relationship between the United States and Pakistan, particularly when it comes to the CIA’s involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Hanif’s approach to the ending of the story—and therefore its beginning as well—mirrors this sense of uncertainty, this inability to distinguish between realities and fictions because of poor information. The book begins by asking how Zia actually died. His plane exploded, yes, but was that the cause? Perhaps it was something else—poison, or a tapeworm, or a bomb planted by the CIA? Hanif admirably demonstrates how even events that history seems to have recorded a certain way have wiggle room for conspiracies, alternatives, and wild speculation. He does it all in jest, however, avoiding any overtones of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing.
Overall, I can safely say I enjoyed A Case of Exploding Mangoes, but that reading it after leaving it to languish for four years probably contributed to a mild case of anticlimactic ennui. It’s just not remarkable enough to live up to any expectations that lingered in my mind. I’m not sorry I read it, though, and depending on your tastes, this might suit you even better than it did me.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes takes place during a period of time about which I have little knowledge: the late half of the twentieth century. Actually, it’s set a year before my birth. I enjoy reading historical fiction from this period, precisely because I like learning more about the events that preceded me. Mohammed Hanif weaves two parallel narratives. Ali Shigri is the son of a famous, now deceased, officer in the Pakistan Army, and he has a plan to kill the President, General Zia. The second half of the story follows Zia himself, with brief interludes that expose the perspectives of the First Lady and Zia’s right- and left-hand men. Everything builds towards a final, climactic chapter in which Zia boards a booby-trapped plane, gets poisoned, and suffers from a tapeworm eating his internal organs. Yeah. It’s intense.
This book took me longer to read than it should have. It took me longer to appreciate than I would have liked. Trouble is, Hanif takes a while to show us what’s so fascinating about these characters. At first glance, Ali is a self-entitled, somewhat cocky young man who thinks he has it all figured out. At first glance, Zia is a slightly crazy military dictator with pretensions of piety. But rather than being humourous, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is mediocre at first.
Thankfully, it doesn’t stay mediocre. As the story develops, Ali and Zia’s stories become more fascinating—Zia’s in particular. I found myself yearning to learn what crazy decision Zia would make next. I was less enthralled with Ali’s arc, but I still wanted to find out what would happen to him, and how he ended up nearly on the same plane as General Zia.
In both stories, the principal themes are ones of isolation and meditation upon corruption. Pakistan, barely 40 years into its existence, groans beneath the military bureaucracy driving the country forward. Ali is trapped within a system just as oppressive as the Soviet government against which Pakistan fights. Zia, despite being the leader of that system, is trapped by it as well. At one point he attempts to go among his people in disguise, and his sojourn is an epic fail. He barely makes it out of the gates of his compound before running into trouble.
In Ali’s case, he is isolated by his role as a cadet in Pakistan’s army. He is disconnected from his past as a peasant growing up in the hills, something reminded to him by fellow prisoner the Secretary-General. Since following his father’s footsteps, Ali has become the sort of person who shouts at “strength 5”, practises silent drills, and salutes on command. The Secretary-General accuses him of “selling out” and collaborating. Ali denies this vociferously, and to some extent I’d side with him—he is planning to kill General Zia, after all. Nevertheless, there’s a definite sense that he has lived outside the sphere of reality too long, firmly ensconced in the denial of the military.
Similarly, Zia is in the ineviable position of being so powerful that no one wants to tell him the truth. Everyone feeds him the information they think will make him happy. His intelligence service and propaganda puppets spread paranoid conspiracy theories whenever they feel the need to discredit the latest attacks against him. I also love how Hanif portrays the corrupt and complicated relationship between the United States and Pakistan, particularly when it comes to the CIA’s involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Hanif’s approach to the ending of the story—and therefore its beginning as well—mirrors this sense of uncertainty, this inability to distinguish between realities and fictions because of poor information. The book begins by asking how Zia actually died. His plane exploded, yes, but was that the cause? Perhaps it was something else—poison, or a tapeworm, or a bomb planted by the CIA? Hanif admirably demonstrates how even events that history seems to have recorded a certain way have wiggle room for conspiracies, alternatives, and wild speculation. He does it all in jest, however, avoiding any overtones of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing.
Overall, I can safely say I enjoyed A Case of Exploding Mangoes, but that reading it after leaving it to languish for four years probably contributed to a mild case of anticlimactic ennui. It’s just not remarkable enough to live up to any expectations that lingered in my mind. I’m not sorry I read it, though, and depending on your tastes, this might suit you even better than it did me.
I just finished this book this morning, and I can't stop thinking about it.
The book is perfectly constructed, like an intricate array of dominoes, and the last hour or so of the book (I listened to the audiobook version) was like watching the dominoes slowly fall, one after the other. It was beautiful, it was heart-wrenching, and above all, immensely satisfying.
The book is perfectly constructed, like an intricate array of dominoes, and the last hour or so of the book (I listened to the audiobook version) was like watching the dominoes slowly fall, one after the other. It was beautiful, it was heart-wrenching, and above all, immensely satisfying.
A very different novel, quite entertaining with some surprising plot points. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book; the main reason I chose it is because I loved the title and had to find out what it meant. I liked how the different story lines progressed and kept me guessing as to how they would meet and tie in together at the end. An enjoyable read.
"You can blame our men in uniform for anything, but you can never blame them for being imaginative"
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes is a Pakistani journalist's extremely witty fictional spin on his country's politics, army (which have, throughout its history, often been the same thing) and its de-facto head of state, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. As one may often note, good fiction is often just a tool to shed light on the truth, and this book, in many ways, does just that.
Which is not to say — especially from across the border — that the state of affairs described in the book must necessarily ring true. But one thing Hanif conveys far too powerfully and quite mimetically is public opinion regarding the state of affairs.
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes essentially talks of a corruption of the Pakistani Military-Political Complex, employing Zia-ul-Haq's mysterious death in a plane crash and the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding it as the locus. While it is chiefly narrated by the irreverent Ali Shigri — a cadet at the Pakistani Air Force Academy;
whose colonel father's suicide was staged by an ISI official under General Zia's orders — the book takes up many perspectives and narrators; including General Zia himself; to tell a story of corruption, violence, jealous ambition, political imprisonment and the idiosyncratic nature of the top brass.
Shigri wants to kill the General — the most powerful man in the country — and is picked up for interrogation when his bunk-mate (and, as is eventually revealed, lover) Obaid goes missing with a military-issue aircraft.
Hanif's characters in this book are all impeccably purposeful to his plot — there are no dead ends, even if they appear to be. Obaid's character, or 'Baby O', explores what happens to the divergent in the masculinist sphere of defence: Obaid is quite imaginative, what some may call 'feminine' or 'pansy', and is interested in books and poetry. He is hence a misfit — in fact, Shigri often, and recurringly so, talks about the incompatibility of literacy and a role in the military. The cross-eyed bundle of paranoia that the author imagines General Zia as reduces the formidable figure into a subject of easy criticism and ridicule, highlighting that power doesn't necessarily make wise — especially autocratic, theocratic power. Hanif also makes a comment on the mixing of dogmatic religious authority with political authority with Blind Zainab, who is the first woman to be ordered death by stoning in the country under its archaic laws on fornication — Zainab was raped.The figure of Major Akhtar highlights the pitfalls of political ambition. The figures of Bannon and the American Ambassador, Raphel, reveal the helplessness of diplomatic personnel and even the ignorant nature of political negotiation and war (here, the Afghanistan war).
Even the minor, flitting characters — such as the operator Akhtar Masih, who is a surprise appearance in the Intelligence for Major Akhtar since most Christians are only sweepers — tells loads about the oppression of minorities in the country. The book also sheds light on how much of political power is showbiz, for both General Zia and General Akhtar spend considerable time obsessing over their speeches and public addresses.
There is yet another important character in the book — a crow, the figure of the incidental; something that is tried to be kept out of the airbase, for it can wreck havoc in it, a little like knowledge (especially civilian knowledge) in such a system — who, along with the General's general inclination towards a certain summer fruit, brings the title of the book into perspective.
However, the most important character (in its own right) has to be the author's striking, piercing and witty style of writing. Muhammad Hanif's satire gives structure to the many threads that he weaves throughout the book, and gives coherence to what public opinion often is, but seldom is reflected as, in a military dictatorship. Hanif also seems to have a penchant for ending his paragraphs and chapters with memorable (and memorably contextual) lines such as this one:
"You want freedom and they give you chicken korma"
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes is a comic, witty and well-written story about things that should very often be written about. The fact that it was also Hanif's debut novel really blows my mind.