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The Upstairs Wife
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Overall
-
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Story
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-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody - it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's protégé and the political leader of India, believed that Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand.
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- By Amazon Customer on 01-11-15
-
The Faithful Scribe
- A Story of Islam, Pakistan, Family, and War
- By: Shahan Mufti
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shahan Mufti’s family history, which he can trace back 1,400 years to the inner circle of the prophet Muhammad, offers an enlightened perspective on the mystifying history of Pakistan. Mufti uses the stories of his ancestors, many of whom served as judges and jurists in Muslim sharia courts of South Asia for many centuries, to reveal the deepest roots - real and imagined - of Islamic civilization in Pakistan.
-
Return of a King
- The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
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Story
From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time.
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-
The Great Game taken to a brilliant new level.
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Summary
A memoir of Karachi through the eyes of its women.
For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death. In that moment these twin catastrophes--one political and public, the other secret and intensely personal--briefly converged. Zakaria uses that moment to begin her intimate exploration of the country of her birth. Her Muslim-Indian family immigrated to Pakistan from Bombay in 1962, escaping the precarious state in which the Muslim population in India found itself following the Partition. For them Pakistan represented enormous promise. And for some time, Zakaria's family prospered, and the city prospered. But in the 1980s, Pakistan's military dictators began an Islamization campaign designed to legitimate their rule--a campaign that particularly affected women's freedom and safety. The political became personal when her aunt Amina's husband, Sohail, did the unthinkable and took a second wife--a humiliating and painful betrayal of kin and custom that shook the foundation of Zakaria's family but was permitted under the country's new laws. The young Rafia grows up in the shadow of Amina's shame and fury while the world outside her home turns ever more chaotic and violent, the opportunities available to post-Partition immigrants are dramatically curtailed, and terrorism sows its seeds in Karachi. Telling the parallel stories of Amina's polygamous marriage and Pakistan's hopes and betrayals, The Upstairs Wife is an intimate exploration of the disjunction between exalted dreams and complicated realities.
What members say
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Saad
- 28-05-19
Struggled to finish this book
The story drags with zero connection between the historical context and the main character. Heavy political bias makes it a hard read as well.
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- rhieannon guzman cruz
- 21-04-18
its ok
struggled through the history part. But enjoyed the parts of her aunt and second wife.
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- Darcy
- 06-10-17
Mixed feelings
I learned many interesting things about Pakistani life, however, the changing timelines and focus of the narrative can become disjointed. The author is a much better writer than reader.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
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- CB
- 25-05-16
Publisher should have paid for professional reader
If you could sum up The Upstairs Wife in three words, what would they be?
The author did do not as well as a professional narrator could have done with this material. This is not a reflection on the author, who is a writer, not a narrator.
What other book might you compare The Upstairs Wife to and why?
Very interesting and informative.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful