Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
"The guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished. That's the
world we live in." In 1988, Pakistani dictator General Zia died in a mysterious plane crash. Debut novelist Hanif has seized upon this unsolved mystery and spun a darkly satirical explanation by way of this tale -- that Zia's plane crash was the result of not one but two assassination attempts.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes is a sly, riotous send-up of Mideast politics, the unintended and often disastrous consequences of American foreign policy, the hypocrisy of Islamic fundamentalism, and last but not least, the far, if not lighter, side of tyranny and torture. Even Osama bin Laden makes a cameo appearance, but at the time, he was our ally in the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and 9/11 was just a date in the future.
It might be hard to imagine how a writer could spin gold from this straw, but Hanif has, delivering a frolicking and shocking political satire. A Case of Exploding Mangoes will have readers laughing -- and thinking that though truth is said to be stranger than fiction, this novel may just have the ring of truth to it.
(Summer 2008 Selection)
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Narrated by Paul Bhattacharjee
Mohammed HanifUnabridged — 10 hours, 16 minutes
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Narrated by Paul Bhattacharjee
Mohammed HanifUnabridged — 10 hours, 16 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Far from coming to a conclusion about the cause of Zia's death, Hanif gleefully thickens the stew of conspiracy theories, introducing at least six other possible suspects, including a blind woman under sentence of death, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner, a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms and a junior trainee officer in the Pakistani Air Force named Ali Shigri, who is also the novel's main narrator. Ali is irreverent, lazy and raspingly sardonic, and his obvious fictional predecessor is Joseph Heller's Yossarian. Indeed, like Catch-22, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is best understood as a satire of militarism, regulation and piety. Much of Hanif's novel is set in the Pakistani Air Force Academy, an institution staffed by crazies and incompetents who could have walked straight out of Heller's novel…Hanif has written a historical novel with an eerie timeliness.
The New York Times
…insanely brilliant…even as Hanif eviscerates, he writes with great generosity and depth…A Case of Exploding Mangoes belongs in a tradition that includes Catch-22, but it also calls to mind the biting comedy of Philip Roth, the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and the feverish nightmares of Kafka. But trying to compare his work to his predecessors is like trying to compare apples to, well, mangoes, because Hanif has his own story to tell, one that defies expectations at every turn.
The Washington Post
Pakistan's ongoing political turmoil adds a piquant edge to this fact-based farce spun from the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia, the dictator who toppled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto. Two parallel assassination plots converge in Hanif's darkly comic debut: Air Force Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri, sure that his renowned military father's alleged suicide was actually a murder, hopes to kill Zia, who he holds responsible. Meanwhile, disgruntled Zia underlings scheme to release poison gas into the ventilation system of the general's plane. Supporting characters include Bannon, a hash-smoking CIA officer posing as an American drill instructor; Obaid, Shigri's Rilke-reading, perfume-wearing barracks pal, whose friendship sometimes segues into sex; and, in a foreboding cameo, a "lanky man with a flowing beard," identified as OBL, who is among the guests at a Felliniesque party at the American ambassador's residence. The Pakistan-born author served in his nation's air force for several years, which adds daffy verisimilitude to his depiction of military foibles that recalls the satirical wallop of Catch 22, as well as some heft to the sagely absurd depiction of his homeland's history of political conspiracies and corruption. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Journalist Hanif's first novel is a darkly witty imagining of the circumstances surrounding the mysterious plane crash that killed Pakistan's military ruler, General Zia, in August 1988. The central figure is a young military officer named Ali Shigri whose much-decorated father was found hanging from a ceiling fan, an alleged suicide. Ali knows, however, that his father's death was something more sinister, and he sets out first to identify the responsible party, Zia, and then-by way of a loopy plan involving swordsmanship and obscure pharmacology-to exact revenge. The book's omniscient narrator gets into the heads of multiple characters, including that of the General himself; his ambitious second-in-command, General Akhtar; a smooth torturer named Major Kiyani; a communist street sweeper who for a time occupies a prison cell near Ali's; a blind rape victim who has been imprisoned for fornication; and a wayward and sugar-drunk crow. Even Osama bin Laden has a cameo, at a Fourth of July bash. But plot summary misleads; the novel has less in common with the sober literature of fact than it does with Latin American magical realism (especially novels about mythic dictators such as Gabriel Garc'a Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch) and absurdist military comedy (like Joseph Heller's Catch-22). Hanif adopts a playful, exuberant voice that's almost a parody of old-fashioned omniscience, as competing theories and assassination plots are ingeniously combined and overlaid. Uneasy rests the head that wears the General's famous twirled mustache-everybody's out to get him. A sure-footed, inventive debut that deftly undercuts its moral rage with comedy and deepens its comedy with moral rage. Agent: ClareAlexander/Gillon Aitken Associates
An insanely brilliant, satirical first novel . . . Belongs in a tradition that includes Catch-22, but it also calls to mind the biting comedy of Philip Roth.”
—The Washington Post
"A brilliant debut. . . . Exceptional. . . . The detail is rich, the prose resonant. Grade A."
—Rocky Mountain News
“Like Catch-22, it is best understood as a satire of militarism, regulation and piety.... Hanif has written a historical novel with an eerie timeliness.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Global satire with a savage bite. . . . Richly imagined.”
—The Miami Herald
“Hanif’s book is sexy, subversive, and magical.... Entertaining and original.”
—Slate
“Fascinating.... It sardonically examines the workings of the Pakistani state, which comes off like a Third World Brazil imagined by Raymond Chandler. What really drives Mangoes, however, is Hanif’s sharp writing and considerable wit.”
—The Village Voice
“There are many reasons to read this excellent novel, and one for which it should be celebrated: Hanif has found in Zia a veritable Homer Simpson of theocratic zealotry . . . The inevitable comparison here is to Dr. Strangelove, and just as the Kubrick film crystallized the absurdities of nuclear escalation into an archetypal cast of idiots-who-run-the-world, Mangoes provides the necessary update.”
—New York Observer
“Witty, elegant, and deliciously anarchic. Hanif has a lovely eye and an even better ear.”
—John le Carré
“Hanif confidently tackles ‘the biggest cover-up in aviation history since the last biggest cover-up,’ bringing absurdist humor and surprising warmth to his story.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Funny, subversive, erotic, and sad. Anyone thinking of applying for the job of unhinged, religious dictator should read it first.”
—Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
“Unputdownable and darkly hilarious . . . Mohammed Hanif is a brave, gifted writer. He has taken territory in desperate need of satire–General Zia, the military, Pakistan at the time of the Soviet-Afghan war–and made it undeniably his own.”
—Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
“A sure-footed, inventive debut that deftly undercuts its moral rage with comedy and deepens its comedy with moral rage . . . The novel has less in common with the sober literature of fact than it does with Latin American magical realism (especially novels about mythic dictators such as Gabriel García Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch) and absurdist military comedy (like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22). Hanif adopts a playful, exuberant voice, as competing theories and assassination plots are ingeniously combined and overlaid.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Pakistan’s ongoing political turmoil adds a piquant edge to this fact-based farce . . . Hanif’s depiction of military foibles recalls the satirical wallop of Catch-22. [He brings] heft to this sagely absurd depiction of his homeland’s history of political conspiracies and corruption.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Entertaining and illuminating . . . Hanif has crafted a clever black comedy about military culture, love, tyranny, family, and the events that eventually brought us to September 11, 2001.”
—Booklist
Though this whirlwind of a story centers on Pakistani Air Force Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri, Hanif’s dazzling exploration of the inner dialogs, workings, and turmoils of a disparate range of characters will blow up your mind some. Shigri is a bright light in his camp’s silent drill squad (yes, such a thing exists), but is jailed on suspicion after his roommate Obaid steals an aircraft and goes AWOL. The fact that the two have been sleeping together doesn’t matter in the least, reflected in one officer’s remark, “You two think you invented buggery?” There is a plot, but it’s placed firmly behind characters whose terrible weaknesses and strengths will captivate readers. There’s Generals, a blind woman imprisoned for fornication (she was raped), even a lowly radio operator who is feeling transcendently great after a fleeting encounter with his superior. “The fume-filled air was fragrant in his lungs. His ears were alive to the chirping of the birds. The bus horns were love tunes in the air waiting to be plucked and put into words.” Then he’s assassinated. The strong sense of doom will have readers expecting new characters to be Brazil-esque torturers, and the comedy is black as a tadpole coloring himself with a Sharpie, but this is no Catch 22 retread; it’s a bloodthirstier White Teeth.
(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
This unusual Pakistani story is based on an enduring mystery—what REALLY caused the 1988 plane crash that killed the dictator General Zia-ul-Huq? In a novel that is being compared to CATCH-22, the fictional Ali Shigri is a young military officer who is questioning various explanations of the accident (including a too- bountiful mango crop!). Narrator Paul Bhattacharjee expertly captures the distinctions of old and young voices and perspectives in this poetic, though very graphic, novel. While there are many clever asides and witticisms, this is also the sad tale of a troubled nation by one of its own. And, like the cause of the plane crash, Ali and his friend Obaid’s true relationship is never fully revealed. The painful conclusion includes a beautiful recitation from the Koran. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940171538606 |
---|---|
Publisher: | W. F. Howes Ltd |
Publication date: | 10/01/2008 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
You might have seen me on TV after the crash. The clip is
short and everything in it is sun-bleached and slightly
faded. It was pulled after the first two bulletins because it seemed
to be having an adverse impact on the morale of the country's
armed forces. You can't see it in the clip, but we are walking
towards Pak One, which is parked behind the cameraman's back,
in the middle of the runway. The aeroplane is still connected to
an auxiliary fuel pump, and surrounded by a group of alert commandos
in camouflaged uniforms. With its dull grey fuselage
barely off the ground, the plane looks like a beached whale contemplating
how to drag itself back to the sea, its snout drooping
with the enormity of the task ahead.
Form PD 4059
Record of Absentees Without Leave or Disappearances
Without Justifiable Causes
Appendix I
Statement by Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri,
Pak No. 898245
Subject: Investigation into the circumstances in
which Cadet Obaid-ul-llah went AWOL
Location where statement was recorded: Cell No. 2,
Main Guardroom, Cadets' Mess, PAF Academy
I, Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri, son of the late Colonel Quli Shigri, do hereby solemnly affirm and declare that, at the reveille on the morning of 31 May 1988, I was the duty officer. I arrived at 0630 hours sharp to inspect Fury Squadron. As I was inspecting the second row, I realised that the sash on my sword belt was loose. I tried to tighten it. The sash came off in my hand. I ran towards my barracks to get a replacement and shouted at Cadet Atiq to take charge. I ordered the squadron to mark time. I could not find my spare sash in my own cupboard; I noticed that Cadet Obaid's cupboard was open. His sash was lying where it is supposed to be, on the first shelf, right-hand corner, behind his golden-braided peaked cap. Because I was in a hurry, I didn't notice anything unlawful in the cupboard. I did, however, notice that the poem on the inside of the door of his cupboard was missing. I do not have much interest in poetry, but since Obaid was my dorm mate, I knew that every month he liked to post a new poem in his cupboard but always removed it before the weekly cupboard inspection. Since the Academy's standard operating procedures do not touch upon the subject of posting poetry in dorm cupboards, I had not reported this matter earlier. I arrived back at 0643, to find that the entire squadron was in Indian position. I immediately told them to stand up and come to attention and reminded Cadet Atiq that the Indian position was unlawful as a punishment and as an acting squadron commander he should have known the rules. Later, I recommended Cadet Atiq for a red strip, copy of which can be provided as an appendix to this appendix. I didn't have the time for a roll call at this point, as we had only seventeen minutes left before it was time to report to the parade ground. Instead of marching Fury Squadron to the mess hall, I ordered them to move on the double. Although I was wearing my sword for that day's silent drill practice and was not supposed to move on the double, I ran with the last file, holding the scabbard six inches from my body. The second officer in command saw us from his Yamaha and slowed down when passing us. I ordered the squadron to salute, but the 2nd OIC did not return my salute and made a joke about my sword and two legs. The joke cannot be reproduced in this statement, but I mention this fact because some doubts were raised in the interrogation about whether I had accompanied the squadron at all. I gave Fury Squadron four minutes for breakfast and I myself waited on the steps leading to the dining hall. During this time I stood at ease and in my head went through the commands for the day's drill. This is an exercise that the drill instructor on secondment, Lieutenant Bannon, has taught me. Although there are no verbal commands in the silent drill, the commander's inner voice must remain at strength 5. It should obviously not be audible to the person standing next to him. I was still practising my silent cadence when the squadron began to assemble outside the dining hall. I carried out a quick inspection of the squadron and caught one first-termer with a slice of French toast in his uniform shirt pocket. I stuffed the toast into his mouth and ordered him to start front-rolling and keep pace with the squadron as I marched them to the parade square. I handed over command to the sergeant of the day, who marched the boys to the armoury to get their rifles. It was only after the Quran recitation and the national anthem were over, and the Silent Drill Squad was dividing into two formations, that the sergeant of the day came to ask me why Cadet Obaid had not reported for duty. He was supposed to be the file leader for that day's drill rehearsal. I was surprised because I had thought all along that he was in the squadron that I had just handed over to the sergeant. "Is he on sick parade?" he asked me. "No, Sergeant," I said. "Or if he is, I don't know about it." "And who is supposed to know?" I shrugged my shoulders, and before the sergeant could say anything, Lieutenant Bannon announced that silent zone was in effect. I must put it on record that most of our Academy drill sergeants do not appreciate the efforts of Lieutenant Bannon in trying to establish our own Silent Drill Squad. They resent his drill techniques. They do not understand that there is nothing that impresses civilians more than a silent drill display, and we have much to learn from Lieutenant Bannon's experience as the chief drill instructor at Fort Bragg. After the drill, I went to the sick bay to check if Cadet Obaid had reported sick. I didn't find him there. As I was coming out of the sick bay, I saw the first-termer from my squadron sitting in the waiting area with bits of vomited toast on his uniform shirt's front. He stood up to salute me; I told him to keep sitting and stop disgracing himself further. As the Character Building lecture had already started, instead of going to the classroom, I returned to my dorm. I asked our washerman, Uncle Starchy, to fix my belt, and I rested for a while on my bed. I also searched Obaid's bed, his side table, and his cupboard to find any clues as to where he might be. I did not notice anything untoward in these areas. Cadet Obaid has been winning the Inter-Squadron Cupboard Competition since his first term at the Academy, and everything was arranged according to the dorm cupboard manual. I attended all the rest of the classes that day. I was marked present in those classes. In Regional Studies we were taught about Tajikistan and the resurgence of Islam. In Islamic Studies we were ordered to do self-study because our teacher, Maulana Hidayatullah, was angry with us, since when he entered the class, some cadets were singing a dirty variation on a folk wedding song. It was during the afternoon drill rehearsal that I got my summons from the 2nd OIC's office. I was asked to report on the double and I reported there in uniform. The 2nd OIC asked me why I had not marked Cadet Obaid absent in the morning inspection when he wasn't there. I told him that I had not taken the roll call. He asked me if I knew where he was. I said I didn't know. He asked me where I had disappeared to between the sick bay and the Character Building lecture. I told him the truth. He asked me to report to the guardroom. When I arrived at the guardroom, the guardroom duty cadet told me to wait in the cell. When I asked him whether I was under detention, he laughed and made a joke about the cell mattress having too many holes. The joke cannot be reproduced in this statement. Half an hour later, the 2nd OIC arrived and informed me that I was under close arrest and that he wanted to ask me some questions about the disappearance of Cadet Obaid. He told me that if I didn't tell him the truth, he'd hand me over to Inter-Services Intelligence and they would hang me by my testicles. I assured him of my full cooperation. The 2nd OIC questioned me for one hour and forty minutes about Obaid's activities, my friendship with him, and whether I had noticed anything strange in his behaviour in what he described as "the days leading up to his disappearance." I told him all I knew. He went out of the cell at the end of the question-answer session and came back five minutes later with some sheets of paper and a pen and asked me to write everything that had happened in the morning and describe in detail where and when I had last seen Cadet Obaid. Before leaving the cell, he asked me if I had any questions. I asked him whether I'd be able to attend the silent drill rehearsal, as we were preparing for the president's annual inspection. I requested the 2nd OIC to inform Lieutenant Bannon that I could continue to work on my silent cadence in the cell. The 2nd OIC made a joke about two marines and a bar of soap in a Fort Bragg bathroom. I didn't think I was supposed to laugh, and I didn't. I hereby declare that I saw Cadet Obaid last when he was lying in his bed reading a book of poetry in English the night before his disappearance. The book had a red cover and what looked like a lengthened shadow of a man. I don't remember the name of the book. After lights-out, I heard him sing an old Indian song in a low voice. I asked him to shut up. The last thing I remember before going to sleep is that he was still humming the same song. I did not see him in the morning, and I have described my day's activities accurately in this statement in the presence of the undersigned. In closing I would like to state that in the days leading up to Cadet Obaid absenting himself without any plausible cause, I did not notice anything unusual about his conduct. Only three days before going AWOL he had received his fourth green strip for taking active part in After-Dinner Lit- erary Activities (ADLA). He had made plans to take me out at the weekend for ice cream and to watch Where Eagles Dare. If he had any plans about absenting himself without any justifiable cause, he never shared them with me or anyone else as far as I know. I also wish to humbly request that my close arrest is uncalled for and that if I cannot be allowed to return to my dorm, I should be allowed to keep the command of my Silent Drill Squad, because tomorrow's battles are won in today's practice.Statement signed and witnessed by:
Squadron Leader Karimullah,
2nd OIC, PAF Academy
"Sir, I swear to God I have no knowledge of Cadet Obaid's
whereabouts," I say, trying to tread the elusive line between grovelling
and spitting in his face.