Mueenuddin brings to bear on his stories his personal experience: the son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, he was educated in the United States and lives in Pakistan. Drawing comparisons to Flaubert, Chekov, and Balzac is a smart way to kick off a writing career. When not searching for analogs from the annals of literature, critics found plenty of superlatives to praise Mueenuddin's work, which effectively depicts a place and people plagued by class and ancestral tension and caught between the past and an uncertain future. While plenty of ugliness exists in the motives and petty schemes of his characters, Mueenuddin remains evenhanded, elegantly setting the stage for the tensions between power and poverty and all attendant human frailties to play out.Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
Description:
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro-society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni. In Nawabdin Electrician, Harounis indispensable electrician, Nawab, excels at his work and at home, raising 12 daughters and one son by virtue of his cunning and ingenuity—qualities that allow him to triumph over entrenched poverty and outlive a robber bent on stealing his livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable without the protection of family and marriage ties, as the protagonist of Saleema learns: a maid in the Harouni mansion who cultivates a love affair with an older servant, Saleema is left with a baby and without recourse when he must honor his first family and renounce her. Similarly, the women who become lovers of powerful men, as in the title story and in Provide, Provide, fall into disgrace and poverty with the death of their patrons. An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience. (Feb.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Mueenuddin brings to bear on his stories his personal experience: the son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, he was educated in the United States and lives in Pakistan. Drawing comparisons to Flaubert, Chekov, and Balzac is a smart way to kick off a writing career. When not searching for analogs from the annals of literature, critics found plenty of superlatives to praise Mueenuddin's work, which effectively depicts a place and people plagued by class and ancestral tension and caught between the past and an uncertain future. While plenty of ugliness exists in the motives and petty schemes of his characters, Mueenuddin remains evenhanded, elegantly setting the stage for the tensions between power and poverty and all attendant human frailties to play out.Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC