Word: sethi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin's superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi's hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly in Lahore during the 1990s and early 2000s, is also certain to keep the critics talking...
...Sethi's engrossing if uneven debut is written in astoundingly assured prose that belies the author's youth (he is 25), particularly in his throbbing takes of contemporary Lahore, where he grew up and returned to after his undergrad years at Harvard. He describes everything from the "mewl of bargainers" at a fabric shop to card games played by bored guards at gated homes like the one in which middle-class narrator Zaki Shirazi lives. Also in the house are three related women whose lives mirror the tottering arc of recent Pakistani history - from partition to the bruised Bhutto years...
...novel (national epic, family saga and testy teen drama knotted into one) meanders - including an abrupt jaunt to Granada, where Zakia and Zaki vacation just so, it seems, Sethi can make a point about the high potential of Islamic culture. And it's burdened by clichés: the love of all things Bollywood; mingy mothers-in-law; the kid who escapes to an American university. Still, Sethi's sharp eye, worthy of being an entomologist's, makes the book a steadily absorbing read, all 400-plus pages of it. Recollecting his first day at a private boy's academy...
...recent political turmoil has settled but has left the already unpopular President in a weaker position, making it even more difficult for him to influence the army and a skeptical public. "The ISI is run by the army and will do what [Army chief] General [Ashfaq] Kayani wants," says Sethi...
Still, many Pakistani politicians and analysts believe Washington should play a subtler role in that pursuit. "This is what I said to Holbrooke and Mullen," says Sethi. "It fuels anti-Americanism. I told Holbrooke that leaking allegations against the ISI is counterproductive. I told Mullen that the closer he appears to Kayani, the more he will feel the need to demonstrate his independence to his constituency ... I don't understand why they can't be more discreet...