Bina Shah’s international
New York Times op-ed, “A ‘Homeland’ We Pakistanis Don’t Recognize,” created such a stir that it was reprinted in the U.S. edition of the
Times under the headline, “Not My ‘Homeland.’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/
In
the piece, Bina writes: “Whenever a Western movie contains a connection
to Pakistan, we watch it in a sadomasochistic way, eager and nervous to
see how the West observes us. We look
to see if we come across to you as monsters, and then to see what our
new, monstrous face looks like. Again and again, we see a refracted,
distorted image of our homeland staring back at us. We know we have
monsters among us, but this isn’t what we look like
to ourselves.”
______________________
A SEASON
FOR MARTYRS
A Novel
The
Sindh province of southeastern Pakistan is home to the fertile plain of
the Indus River, the great mystical Sufi saints and a rich history
that binds Muslims and Hindus alike. Young Ali Sikandar is from a long
line of landowners in Sindh, a fact he has hidden since his father
abandoned the family. Relied upon to support his mother and siblings as a
TV journalist, he finds it impossible to refuse
even the most dangerous assignments. One day in October 2007, Ali is
ordered to cover the controversial return of Benazir Bhutto following
her eight years in exile in Bina Shah’s exquisite look at her homeland,
A SEASON FOR MARTYRS (Delphinium Books/distributed by HarperCollins; November 4, 2014; $14.95).
Bhutto’s
very presence invites protests and assassination attempts, but to Ali
she symbolizes his struggles with his father, his fervent longing
for a better life, and his identity as a Sindhi. Ali finds himself
irrevocably drawn to the pro-democracy People’s Resistance Movement, a
secret that sweeps him into the many contradictions of a country still
struggling to embrace modernity.
In
her American debut, one of Pakistan’s most gifted writers sheds light
on a region and culture little understood in the West. As Shah weaves
together the centuries-old history of Ali’s feudal family and its
connection to the Bhuttos, she brilliantly reveals a story at the
crossroads of the personal and the political, a chronicle of one man’s
desire to overcome extremity to find love, forgiveness,
and even identity itself.
BINA SHAH
is a regular contributor to the International
New York Times and frequent guest on the BBC. She has contributed essays to
Granta, The Independent and The Guardian. She holds
degrees from Wellesley College and the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, and is an alumna of the University of Iowa’s International
Writers Workshop. Her novel,
Slum Child, was a bestseller in Italy and she has been published in English, Spanish, German and Italian. She lives in Karachi.
A SEASON FOR MARTYRS
By Bina Shah
Delphinium Books/distributed by HarperCollins; Nov. 4, 2014
$14.95; 288 pages
ISBN: 978-1-88-328561-6