A New History of Torments

by Zulfikar Ghose

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Genres: Fiction, Novels

303 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1982

About the author

Zulfikar Ghose (born in Sialkot, India (now Pakistan) on March 13, 1935) is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism.

He became a close friend of British experimental writer B. S. Johnson, with whom he collaborated on several projects, and of Anthony Smith. The three writers met when they served as joint editors of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. Ghose also met English poet Ted Hughes and his wife, the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and American author Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated.
While teaching and writing in London from 1963–1969, Ghose also free-lanced as a sports journalist, reporting on cricket for The Observer newspaper. Two collections of his poetry were published, The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). The Contradictions explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghose’s eighth novel is set in the sweltering realm of the Amazonian landowning class. A mixture of high-class soap opera, hair-raising misadventure involving a feminist tribe and classic cannibals, and a mordant take on marriage, the novel is vintage Ghose: a sun-scorched literary romp told in elliptical and entrancing prose.

[Jeanne Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madness--one of the only books I've ever read that doesn't have a conscious intention behind it, some irritating moral message or point of view. Narrative for the point of narrative plus lesbian cannibals.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not in the first rank of magic realists, but still quite entertaing when he's NOT writing historical fictions--avoid those like the plague. This one works up some interesting narrative complications that blend Dickens with Garcia Marquez,all set in something like the civil-war chaos of contemporary Colombia.