Bhutto’s first work, Songs of Blood and Sword (2010), published when she was only 28, was a memoir that covered the murder of Murtaza Bhutto, her father, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, her aunt. Rather than focus solely on the tragedies of the family dynasty, Bhutto prudently branched out and also traced the ragged trajectory of her equally riven nation, from partition to the war on terror. Her own biography is punctuated with stays and schooling in Kabul, Damascus, New York, London and Karachi. Unlike many debut writers, Bhutto has experienced enough – lived enough – to pen a novel. She can authentically portray for the reader a backwoods North Waziristan village and is clearly au fait with the messy tribal tensions, religious conflict and skewed loyalties. But can she make the more demanding transition from fact to fiction and tell a tale with characters that count in prose that entrances? The novel unfolds over a single morning and revolves around three very different brothers. After sitting down to breakfast, all go their separate ways. The eldest, Aman Erum, hails a taxi to a local mosque. The second, Sikandar, a doctor, heads off to work at his hospital. The youngest, Hayat, rides out of town on his motorbike. So far, so mundane. But over the course of discrete narrative strands, Bhutto stealthily, incrementally, fleshes each man out. Read more: thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/pakistans-tribal-regions-the-tense-setting-for-fatima-bhutto-novel#page1#ixzz2l0c1TDZY Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:49:52 +0000
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