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Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

3.29 of 5 stars 3.29 · rating details · 624 ratings · 99 reviews

From the author of the acclaimed A Case of Exploding Mangoes (“An insanely brilliant, satirical first novel . . . Belongs in a tradition that includes Catch-22”—The Washington Post), a subversively, often shockingly funny new novel set in steaming Karachi, about second chances, thwarted ambitions and love in the most unlikely places.
The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospita...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published May 29th 2012 by Knopf (first published August 19th 2011)

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Apr 27, 2013 Darryl rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The latest novel by Mohammed Hanif, author of the Booker Prize longlisted novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, is set in contemporary Karachi, Pakistan in the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments, a public hospital formerly established by the Catholic Church and led by a Catholic chief medical officer but staffed by Muslim doctors and nurses. Alice Bhatti is a newly hired nurse who trained at Sacred Heart, but was forced to leave due to her outspoken Christian beliefs and a trumped up conviction...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Saritha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

*SPOILER*
I feared for Alice's safety right through this book and it brought home - in her love for Teddy, affection for Noor and Little, respectful deference to Nurse Hina, fear of Begum Qaz's sons - what it means to be a woman, a Christian and living in Pakistan.

The book is nonchalant about everyday violence, attitude towards women and gun-toting in Pakistan. I was very disturbed and at the same time, morbidly amused by the section where Teddy vents his ire by shooting his gun and the chain re...more

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Jun 05, 2013 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

This story of a nurse in a charity hospital in teeming Karachi is at once funny, compelling, and disturbing. The story is delivered in an unflinching and raw manner that had me turning pages in horrified fascination. I loved the character of Alice, an irrepressible girl raised in the tiny christian minority in the poorest slum of the city, to the lowest caste parents possible. Her story is inspiring, depressing, funny, sad, and shocking. From her practically raising herself after her mother dies...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Ava rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book reminded me of a game of billiards. The cue hits a ball which nudges several other balls and finally kisses one teetering on the edge, and pushes it into the pocket. We are not solely responsible for all that happens to us. It is a game of cause and effect, the actions of others tell on us and often improve or worsen our situation.

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is the story of Alice Bhatti of French Colony daughter of Joseph Bhatti, the prince among chooras. He is the go-to guy when a clogged...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Zainab rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A gripping novel. 'Unputdownable' yes. Has an ending that takes you back to the beginning and literally so. Mohammed Hanif's craft at story telling is spellbinding. Specially towards the end - chapter 26 onwards - my curiosity was at the edge. From the beginning to the end the book is elaborate in its surprises. And the petition by Joseph Bhatti in the end is quite tactfully placed. Gives a whole new outlook to the novel.

Hanif draws a vivid and sadly, a true picture of the state of affairs in ou...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Fini rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The one thing that captures my interest every time I pick up a novel written by Pakistani authors is always the context of the novel. In case of these types of novels, it is always the cultural context which gives colours to the stories told. Any story that takes place in Pakistan or the Middle East never fails to captivate me. My first experience reading these kinds of novels was when I enrolled in a Global Literature course in my college. Since then, I have been constantly on the lookout for...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Priya rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: drama, around-the-world

This is the first book of the author that I'm reading, so the style was a surprise. I'm still undecided on whether I liked the style or not though - in some places, it was very well written and in others, well.. I had to re-read some parts again because to figure out if it was the past, recent past, present or the recent future! I realize there's something unique about it and a lot of authors these days do use similar narratives, but personally, I don't enjoy it all that much. Mostly because it...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book around the same time protests broke out in Delhi over the gang-rape of a female medical student on a public bus. It struck me as an uncanny time to be reading this novel, since much of what I took away from the novel centered around the injustices suffered by women in the region.

Just like Mohammed Hanif's previous offering (A Case of Exploding Mangoes), Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tragicomic cross between Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. It's...more I read this book around the same time protests broke out in Delhi over the gang-rape of a female medical student on a public bus. It struck me as an uncanny time to be reading this novel, since much of what I took away from the novel centered around the injustices suffered by women in the region.

Just like Mohammed Hanif's previous offering (A Case of Exploding Mangoes), Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tragicomic cross between Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. It's like a mash-up of social commentary, religion, culture and politics all wrapped up in a thick layer of dark, sardonic humour.

Alice Bhatti is an anomaly in a society where poor women have been taught to accept the inevitable humiliation and suffering that is forced upon them (there is a lot of subtle reference to this during Alice's shifts at the hospital, as well as the speculation surrounding her mother's death in the home of a wealthy employer). She refuses to submit to the advances of perverse wealthy men, dishes out her own form of revenge/justice against men who wrong her, and even attempts some sort of upward mobility despite being born into the lowest of castes. She is inspiring in a way that only those in the harshest of circumstances can be, and Hanif has once again created the kind of character you feel compelled to root for despite the apparent hopelessness of their situation.

Hanif's writing is a pleasure to read in its detailed description of the world the novel is set in. As someone with not an awful lot of knowledge of Pakistani culture, it was an enlightening read. Sure, I had to google a few terms here and there, but it wasn't difficult to immerse myself in the cultural context of the story.

The only complaint I have (with this novel as well as his last), is that Hanif tends to jump back and forth between the past, the present (where the main storyline has progressed until), and the future (post-main storyline) without any evident change in tense or any indicators of time. While this is a useful tool at times (it provides a fair bit of foreshadowing as well as background to the characters), it can also get confusing because I found myself having to flip back and forth between pages to figure out what happened first.

Overall, great novel with Hanif's usual dose of cynicism and wit, rich in cultural context and social insight. (less)

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Sep 15, 2012 Ali Shahid rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mohammad Hanif has a distinctive style of writing, with short chapters and a 245 page limit. This story focusses on the life of a janitor's ( choohra) daughter, Alice, who pursues a career in nursing. The personality of Alice, choohri nurse and her affair with the Mr Junior Faisalabad bodybuilder Teddy Butt reveals the social and cultural contrasts in our society.
I initially thought the story is based in Lahore but this story is actually based in Karachi and the year is somewhat 2008 or 2009 as...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Kiwiflora rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the latest novel from Mr Haniff, writer of the brilliantly clever and satirical 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes'. This novel was set around the plane crash that killed Pakistani President General Zia in 1988, along with a number of other dignitaries. Long listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, this is a many faceted, ingenious, very tightly plotted and held together novel. Such a great read I couldn't wait to start this latest novel from Mr Haniff. Not quite in the same class I am afraid.

Onc...more This is the latest novel from Mr Haniff, writer of the brilliantly clever and satirical 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes'. This novel was set around the plane crash that killed Pakistani President General Zia in 1988, along with a number of other dignitaries. Long listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, this is a many faceted, ingenious, very tightly plotted and held together novel. Such a great read I couldn't wait to start this latest novel from Mr Haniff. Not quite in the same class I am afraid.

Once again, he takes a whole raft of issues that seem to characterise the complete inability of Pakistan to get its act together. Unlike India just next door. Primarily this is a novel about the lowly status of women in Pakistani society, but also takes up religion - Christianity vs Islam; corruption; the state of the hospital system; untouchables; the power of the police; crowd hysteria and riots - a huge variety of issues. Alice Bhatti is at the centre of the novel. Alice is a nurse, Catholic, she has a certain healing gift, and has just started a new job at the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in a poor part of Karachi. She has to navigate her life around the usual list of misfits that are part of hospitals - corrupt doctors, injured criminals, officious supervisors, rich and poor dying mothers and their sons - and all the time really trying to do the right thing. She reminded me so much of the very human TV character Nurse Jackie.

She rather suddenly and unexpectedly falls in love with a most unlikely husband in anyone's book - Teddy Butt, about as unlike Nurse Jackie's husband as you could possibly get! Teddy is, I am afraid to say, thick. Not a brain in that skull of his. He is an apprentice to the Gentlemen's Squad of the Karachi police, in other words tidies up and disposes of the human messes that the Karachi police make in their daily line of work. I just did not understand this love affair, not at all. Its reason for being, the courtship, why she ever married him, the fact that the marriage takes place on a submarine!! It is just so fantastic as to be ridiculous.

Being considerably smarter than her husband, Alice cottons on rather quickly that her husband is not as ideal as she led herself to believe he would be and the storyl finishes fairly soon after that.

And that I afraid to say is all that goes on in this novel. Alice's daily life is used as a backdrop for the author's commentary on how Pakistan is doing in the 21st century, and it is not doing very well at all. It is not so much what he is trying to say, however, that is disappointing; it is that compared to 'Mangoes' it isn't said very well. This book really goes nowhere, I thought all the characters unrealistic and not well drawn, it felt very disjointed and jumpy to read, and parts of the plot were just plain silly - the submarine, the miracles that take place. All in all a most disappointing read.(less)

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Jan 20, 2013 Shilpi Jain rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read somewhere that Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is 'an unnerving, evil little book by a genius' and immediately put it on my to-read list. Written by Mohd. Hanif, who is also the author of 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes', this book is supremely comic yet dark for those who think, fast-paced yet philosophical for those who feel, and overall, amazingly taut in it's portrayal of 1990 Pakistan, of the lives of lower middle class to poor without being preachy. The portrayal of characters is, to Hanif's...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

“ ‘My job is to cure people, to cure them at the worst of times. I don’t decide when someone is going to die. He does.’ He raises his forefinger towards the ceiling. Alice Bhatti looks at the ceiling fan in confusion: Put Your Faith in Philips, it says” (4-5).
“ ‘…they are attracted to bomb blast sites like flies to…’ She usually finds a rotting seasonal fruit to complete her analysis of the state of the national health” (30).
“There was a time in Joseph Bhatti’s life when he could have stood at a...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Mohammed Hanif is a good story-teller and brings out people’s idiosyncrasies well, capturing the quirks of caste, culture and politics in contemporary Pakistan in subtle ways that present the picture of a society stuck in tradition no matter how much it tries to pull away. The protagonist Alice Bhatti is an interesting portrayal of the wannabe-independent female who, in trying to escape her caste, parentage and the circumstances she has been born into, marries outside the expected norms; outside...more Mohammed Hanif is a good story-teller and brings out people’s idiosyncrasies well, capturing the quirks of caste, culture and politics in contemporary Pakistan in subtle ways that present the picture of a society stuck in tradition no matter how much it tries to pull away. The protagonist Alice Bhatti is an interesting portrayal of the wannabe-independent female who, in trying to escape her caste, parentage and the circumstances she has been born into, marries outside the expected norms; outside her religion, only to dream of returning to what she has left behind. Her marriage to Teddy Butt is quickly followed by disillusion as she realises that she doesn’t really know what her husband gets up to as a police ‘helper.’ Alice Bhatt is a mass of contradictions challenging my stereotypical expectations of what I thought a prisoner from Borstal would be like after release. Teddy Butt on the other hand is smitten with Alice and after a brief courtship marries her, only to begin to love-hate Alice as the idealised image he has of her begins to fall away and he learns what it is to be married to a real woman, not just an image. Teenage Noor, his dying mother Zainab, and Dr. Pereira are intriguing secondary characters plagued by their own insecurities and egos. Hanif does a good job of drawing us into their frightened little worlds.

There are some well put together lines like this one given to Sister Hina Alvi, ‘As a child I was taught that God is in everything. I thought that this concept was so simple that even someone like me could understand it. Now that I am getting old, they want me to literally see God in vegetables. For the last five years, every year there is an aubergine somewhere that, when you slice it, it has the word Allah running through it. I am sure if you slice it the other way you can see your own husband’s face and if you move it sideways you can read something obscene. There is always a cloud shaped like Muhammad. I know some people see Yassoo on a cross or his mother in a pretty dress in every seasonal fruit. Why do people need that kind of evidence? Isn’t there always a flood or an earthquake or a child run over by a speeding car driven by another child to remind us that God exists?’

However, I found the ending abrupt and slightly disconnected from the main text. Written up as an Epilogue, it has a surreal aftertaste and left me feeling dissatisfied which is perfectly fine in my opinion, if the ending is still memorable. I can see how Hanif has contrived using the show-don’t-tell writing device to cleverly knit the ending together, but there is still something missing between the part where the end is and the Epilogue begins. Joseph Bhatti, Alice’s father, is the narrator of the Epilogue and as we find out, turns out to be the narrator of the book. But, this is unfeasible because we know that Alice and Joseph hardly interact or talk, how could he have known the details about her working life that are presented by him as narrator…? Teddy Butt’s final act of retaliation against his wife didn’t ring true to the way his character was steadily built up within the book. Hanif could have done a stronger job of showing us a cruel streak in Butt earlier on. Human complexity isn’t that complex once you trace the reasons behind the complexity – but in the story/ a novel – these must be revealed somehow, only leaving the reader guessing to some extent. I found that I was being asked to make unfeasible, insurmountable leaps to credibly believe the final actions of Teddy Butt and, for that matter, Inspector M. In all, a decently-put together book, but as a story, just ok.
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Aug 09, 2012 Kkraemer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book opens with the following:
In every man dances a thief
In every man dances a peacock

This book took me to a different world, a world where the thief and the peacock are always together, often in the same person. The single exception is Alice Bhatti herself, who is a passionate young woman whose sense of self demands a world better than the one she's been born into.

This book takes place in a charity hospital in Pakistan, and Alice Bhatti has somehow escaped the poverty and isolation of gro...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Ava Butzu rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Because I was smitten by both "Moth Smoke" and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," by Mohsin Hamid, I was convinced that "Our Lady" would be similarly compelling...after all, the book came with accolades from multiple reputable book reviews. However, placing these two writers on the same level simply both authors set their stories in Pakistan is a poor point of comparison. Where Hamid's characters are compelling and complex and his plots a series of interlocked events that spiral his characters towa...more

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May 02, 2013 Cheyenne Blue rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

A rather unsettling, disturbing, melancholy book that is beautifully written. It's the tale of Junior Nurse Alice Bhatti (born to the lowest cast, determined to make something of herself, sent to prison as a scapegoat) and her life in a chaotic hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

There's a raft of characters apart from Alice: Noor, the teenager she befriended in jail who now works at the hospital to ensure a bed for his dying mother, Teddy Butt, rather thick and brutal police informer who falls in lo...more A rather unsettling, disturbing, melancholy book that is beautifully written. It's the tale of Junior Nurse Alice Bhatti (born to the lowest cast, determined to make something of herself, sent to prison as a scapegoat) and her life in a chaotic hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

There's a raft of characters apart from Alice: Noor, the teenager she befriended in jail who now works at the hospital to ensure a bed for his dying mother, Teddy Butt, rather thick and brutal police informer who falls in love with the beautiful Alice, Sister Hina Alvi, Alice's father, Inspector Malangi of the G-Squad (the police unit Teddy is informally attached to) and not-Abu Zar, a police suspect. The characters are lightly drawn against a background of misogyny, corruption, poverty, and religious discrimination in Pakistan. These descriptions of the hospital and life in Pakistan kept me going through the rather slow start to the book, but the final third picks up the pace and ties in all the threads of the book in an abrupt and difficult ending.

For all its apparent slowness in the start, the writing uses small, apparently unconnected incidents to build a bigger picture - particularly of a woman's status in Pakistan. Alice is a strong character, but even she is not able to hold her own and for all her strength, there's an underlying acceptance of her position. Some of the most compelling parts of the story were her relationship with Teddy Butt, particularly after they are married. Teddy's madonna-whore complex is very skillfully drawn and chilling.

While I was reading this, I thought that the characters were almost skimmed over in favor of the background, but now that I've finished I realize I know so much about each of them. It's only now, when I've finished the book, that I can see the entire picture, all the threads of story come together, the complexity of the characters and their interactions, the background setting, the hospital, and the ending (which I will not talk about as it is a spoiler, except to say that IMHO it was the perfectly constructed ending for this story).

I started this review with 4 stars for this book, but I've upped it to 5 stars, because the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the writing, and the way the book is constructed.

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Oct 16, 2012 Fatima Afridi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dark, ugly, snarky and yet true. It was sad and funny, sadly funny at the same time. I did find it very jerky and disjointed though, as if the author was on a psychotic delusional rant or manic or hopelessly stoned.
Perhaps this is how Karachi actually is, complex and chugging along the lines of life with all vigour but being joltingly stopped by unimaginable hurdles. And yet it carries on.
As much as I found it compellingly true, I could not like it because of the way it was written. At times I w...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Muhammad Atif rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Its a true depiction of what happens in Pakistan be it how all minorities are stereotyped as chorahs while the Muslas who spray acid on people are not any less of Chorahs. This novel was fulfilling owing to the vast variety of lower/lower middle class issues that we come across every day. The events as such were nothing we have never heard of but the way the author has intricately woven them together gives us a some what fresh orientation to them. For me a good book is where u end up feeling for...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Eleanor rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had trouble getting into the flow of this book. Was it supposed to be comic in spite of the violence? Because of the violence? Would I understand it better if I was more used to the rhythm of a chaotic city like Karachi? There is a tool necessary for full appreciation of this book that I fear I don't have. Yet, as always with books chosen by my newly resurrected book club, I am appreciative of the chance to read something that I would never otherwise have read. The writing is interesting - a l...more

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Jan 23, 2012 John Carpenter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So far, this is one whacky, hell of a story...

OK, so I've never been to Pakistan, but wow, what a wild place this novel makes it out to be: Catholics posing as Muslims, corruption everywhere, bodybuilders, hit men, sewer cleaners, mystic healers, and a protagonist that makes Nurse Jackie look like Cinderella. Plus EVERYONE carries a gun. This is behind-the-scenes Karachi and kaleidoscopic storytelling. What is life anyway, and how do we all survive it? The ins and outs of an overcrowded hospital...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Stacia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

A gripping, gritty, immediate, darkly funny, & disturbing tale of life in modern-day Karachi. Hanif tackles some big issues (horrific treatment of women, role of men, violence, castes, religion, medical care or lack thereof,...) & presents them in a very real, touching, sometimes funny, sometimes ironic, sometimes horrifying, & eye-opening manner. Sadly, I think Hanif has probably painted a fairly realistic portrait of daily life for many in similar situations to the main characters....more

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Oct 01, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a tough one. I wanted to love it. And I did love parts of it. Mohammed Hanif is such a talented writer.

I appreciate his enormous and complicated task: telling a story which deals with the complexities of life in contemporary Pakistan, particularly those between Muslims and Catholics, between untouchables and members of higher classes, and between men and women. The novel succeeds in its mission of portraying this extremely difficult world. Alice Bhatti does her best as an untrained nurse...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Neha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kwench, read-in-2012

Witty, racy and dark – riveting writing style of Hanif. I am clueless to the real challenges of a country or a religion and my opinions are coloured by media and literature, so I will limit my review to the writing and the plot – neutralising any references to a religion or country.

Hanif shows you the underbelly and madness of a country’s political and feudal society. The strong influence of prejudice, power and fundamentalism in all spheres of life where your identity is either of a bigot or a...more Witty, racy and dark – riveting writing style of Hanif. I am clueless to the real challenges of a country or a religion and my opinions are coloured by media and literature, so I will limit my review to the writing and the plot – neutralising any references to a religion or country.

Hanif shows you the underbelly and madness of a country’s political and feudal society. The strong influence of prejudice, power and fundamentalism in all spheres of life where your identity is either of a bigot or a traitor. In times of doubt your honesty and loyalty is judged by taking off your pants.

The author of ‘The Case of Exploding Mangoes’ recreates another riveting tale which doesn’t shy away from calling black as black. The story reminded me the fact that as many civil rules and laws we form, we are still animals living by the jungle law killing for survival and power. Nothing is fair or just if you hold the power and the gun.

The main protagonist is Alice – born into a low caste family but bold and brazen in a man’s world. She married a protector but when the protector becomes the hunter then your state is no better than a chicken waiting to be cut and served. Teddy, Noor and other characters form central to the plot each bringing a shade of darkness and hidden secrets and desires in them. One is running behind goons and criminals and delivering its own form of justice, one is strong enough to fight the world but can’t do anything to save his ailing and dying mother, one is the strong administrator who gets sympathetic to the victim, one a low caste cleaner who becomes hand of God trying to cure people with a candle and glass. So in short you will not get a normal character or a common man, all of them are shown struggling with their individual demons merging into a shocking climax which you will must read to know.

Leaving you with a few lines from the book..

In every man dances a thief, In every man dances a peacock.

The Gentlemen’s squad is a group of like-minded police officers, not really an entity commissioned by any law-enforcing authority. The name of the unit doesn’t exist on any official register, on letterheads or websites. There is no annual audits or medals of bravery; it does not hold press conferences to unveil the criminals it catches or kills, or more often catches and then kills. It is a group of gentlemen who, not given to any flights of literary imagination, have decided to call themselves the Gentlemen’s Squad. It is a crew of reformed rapists (I have got three grown-up daughters now, you know), tortures, (it’s a science, not an art), sharpshooters (monkeys really, as we spend half our lives perched of rooftops and trees) and generally the kind of investigators who can recognise a criminal by looking the way he blows his nose or turns a street corner. They have survived together for such a long time because they believe in giving each other space, they come together for a good cause like they have today, and then disperse to pursue their own personal lives.

‘Don’t be frightened of your own reflection. We all have bad moments in front of the mirror,’ says Noor. ‘You should probably get married. I have heard that a good husband is the only cure for bad dreams. You know why? Because then you are sleeping with your bad dream.’(less)

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Mar 06, 2012 Jawad Nasir rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Looking back, it was a fairly interesting book. Not only was the story different from the stereotype (which was something I had already made up halfway through), but it somehow actually managed to teach me a thing or two. The ending was turning out to be dull and i expected it to leave me hanging, but the Epilogue really twisted the screws and it was eventually conclusive in almost every aspect of the story. Although I am left wishing to know more about the characters and what happens after the...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Saadia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book that is not well written or even a pleasure to read, but important because of the society it tries to portray, and it does so pretty honestly.

The prose is crass and sparse, which worked quite will in Hanif's first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, but doesn't do the same here due to the colorful nature of the hospital Alice works in and the religiosity of Alice and her situation. Sticking true to it dark and humorous exposition of violence, deprivation and human misery, this cou...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Subroto rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: black-humor

Delicious acidic humor presently at some 80 something of this 230 or so pages.

Reading this book reminded me of the word "Kaleidoscope" - every scene reflects something else.

That said the hold of the writer slips in the second half of the book and hence my rating moves from 4 to 3 as i close this book.

The story's impeccable so are the characterizations and the way of writing but what we miss is the wrapping up of it all - which a good end should be.

And by end I don't mean the last chapter alone...more

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Jun 03, 2013 Vandita rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Cutting up women is a sport older than cricket but just as popular and equally full of obscure rituals and intricate rules."

"Suspicious husband, brother protecting his honor, father protecting his honor, son protecting his honor, jilted lover avenging his honor, feuding farmers settling their water disputes, moneylenders collecting their interest: most of life’s arguments, it seemed, got settled by doing various things to a woman’s body."

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Aug 23, 2012 World Literature Today added it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

"Mohammed Hanif’s second novel proves to be a deep, gritty, and exciting addition to his literary career." - Melanie Wattenbarger, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This book was reviewed in the September/October 2012 issue of World Literature Today. The full review can be read at the WLT website: http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/2...

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Aug 04, 2012 Karlan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult

Set in a violent Pakistan, the story was upsetting. Alice,a nurse, marries a strange man whom she meets in the hospital when he comes in as a sort of unofficial police aid. He becomes crazed and the tragedy is not a surprise. There are misunderstandings, miracles and humor while terrible acts are portrayed. His style of writing appeals to me since I liked A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES, his first novel.

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Apr 15, 2012 Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Check my review for the online book review mag, The Washington Independent Review of Books, coming out in May when this book is due to be released. It's a miracle of a book. Hanif's first novel was a contender for the Mann-Booker Prize; I hope this one wins. Tough, humane and wondrous. Beautifully written, with at least two sections that are in writing-terms as good as it gets.

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About Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif is a Pakistani writer and journalist. He was born at Okara. He was graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He initially worked for Newsline, The Washington Post and India Today. In 1996, he moved to London to work for the BBC. Later, he became the head of the BBC's Urdu service in London.

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The Baloch Who Is Not Missing & Others Who Are

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“Men constantly feel hungry and women constantly feel sad. That's what marriage does to them. ~Teddy Butt, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti” — 4 people liked it

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Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

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