A major literary debut that explores class, culture, power, and
desire among the ruling and servant classes of Pakistan.
In the spirit of Joyce''s Dubliners and Turgenev''s A
Sportsman''s Sketches, Daniyal Mueenuddin''s collection of linked
stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of
the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani
family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan. An
aging feudal landlord''s household staff, the villagers who depend
on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have
sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and
constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock
of change. Mueenuddin bares-at times humorously, at times
tragically-the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and
presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers
and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and
transformed.