Wish Maker by Ali Sethi
Riverhead Books, 2009
After reading The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, I wanted to read another cultural book. This was not a quick book to get into and I laid it aside; after going back to it, I was very pleased with the insight I got into modern Pakistani life.
~Beth
"Through three generations of a Lahore family, Sethi charts the tumults within Pakistani political and social life since partition in 1947, including the regular vacillations between military rule and feeble attempts at democracy….But he is often less interested in providing a social critique than in interpreting juvenescence, which seems no different on the Indian sub continent than it is here. Zaki Shirazi, the book’s narrator, grows up in a household of women — his conservative, disenfranchised grandmother; a headstrong mother who advocates sweeping societal change through the magazine she edits; and his teenage cousin, who fasts only for the purest reason: to get the boy. Zaki presents these characters’ engaging histories, along with his own youthful searches for acceptance, the undulations in their lives echoing those in Pakistani society. By juxtaposing references to American pop culture (“The Wonder Years,” Mariah Carey) with, say, the machination of arranged marriages, Sethi exposes the essential friction of life in modern Pakistan..”-The New York Times Book Review
For more reviews and an interview with the author go to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Maker-Ali-Sethi/dp/1594488754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249513729&sr=1-1
The author’s website is at http://www.alisethi.com/
Watch Ali Sethi on the Travis Smiley Show http://video.pbs.org/video/1156309466/program/1127859226
He discusses the cultural and economic differences among Pakistanis.
~Beth
"Through three generations of a Lahore family, Sethi charts the tumults within Pakistani political and social life since partition in 1947, including the regular vacillations between military rule and feeble attempts at democracy….But he is often less interested in providing a social critique than in interpreting juvenescence, which seems no different on the Indian sub continent than it is here. Zaki Shirazi, the book’s narrator, grows up in a household of women — his conservative, disenfranchised grandmother; a headstrong mother who advocates sweeping societal change through the magazine she edits; and his teenage cousin, who fasts only for the purest reason: to get the boy. Zaki presents these characters’ engaging histories, along with his own youthful searches for acceptance, the undulations in their lives echoing those in Pakistani society. By juxtaposing references to American pop culture (“The Wonder Years,” Mariah Carey) with, say, the machination of arranged marriages, Sethi exposes the essential friction of life in modern Pakistan..”-The New York Times Book Review
For more reviews and an interview with the author go to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Maker-Ali-Sethi/dp/1594488754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249513729&sr=1-1
The author’s website is at http://www.alisethi.com/
Watch Ali Sethi on the Travis Smiley Show http://video.pbs.org/video/1156309466/program/1127859226
He discusses the cultural and economic differences among Pakistanis.
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