Mohammed HanifRecensioni

I wanted to like this book. I expected to like this book, and did so at the start. Eventually, some 180 pages in, I found I could no longer turn the pages to find out how this story of Ellie, the American pilot who crashes in the desert, teenager Momo who lives in a refugee camp, and Momo's dog, the most intelligent of the three, pannned out. The book has a strange, disconnected feel to it which I enjoyed at first, but in the end I .... just gave up.

It's a somewhat comical narrative about an actual event that led to the demise of the military dictator, Gen Zia, along with many others, in a plane crash. The investigation suggested the possibility that the crash was a deliberate assassination.

In his fictional account of this incident, Mohammad Hanif presents the story in an engaging and enjoyable manner. He effectively brings to light the military's control over the state, which has resulted in considerable suffering for the country over the past 75 years.

I rated it with three stars, because the narrative tends to slow down in the middle of the book. In my opinion, the novel might have been more effective if it were shorter, possibly around 225 pages.

I read this excellent book not realising that it was inspired from true facts. It makes it even better. Recommended

This book is a quirky political satire dealing with a crazy conspiracy interspersed with some really controversial elements concerning Pakistan's government of the Nineteen Eighties. The narrative is jumpy and I had no clue what I was reading for quite some way into this book. Finally, it all ends - can I say 'well'? - with the explosion of General Zia-ul-Haq's aircraft, Pak One, due to multiple causes. One thing that stands out in this difficult-to-follow story is its dark humour; it deserves four stars for that!

I really enjoyed this book, it was creatively and interestingly written. The characters were true characters. I just didn't like the ending.

Strange book. I would have liked better, if the ending had not been first. Hanif was less successful than other authors in switching timelines between the investigation and the events leading up to the exploding mangoes.

Wickedly funny and a real treat. A military satire as dark as I've ever read.

"You must have heard that god created couples so that his creation could multiply and overpopulate the world. But god also created couples so that they could hound each other in life, betray each other and then haunt each other after one of them dies"

I am not sure that I would have kept reading this if it wasn't for being an ARC. Lots of smart comments about aid, international relations and foreign colonial wars, but the story didn't grab me. One downed pilot, one dog and one fifteen year old refugee who has lost his brother. Although initially it read to me as if it was something that felt all too real, it was as though the author lost faith in telling that story and instead diverted into magical realism territory.

"When someone dies in a raid or a shooting or when someone’s throat is slit, their last drop of blood transforms into a tiny red bird and flies away. And then reappears when we are trying hard to forget them, when we think we have forgotten them, when we think we have learnt to live without them, when we utter those stupid words that we have ‘moved on’. It’s just a reminder that they may have gone but they haven’t really left yet.

Major Ellie, an American pilot, crash lands in an unnamed desert country, where he is rescued by Momo, an enterprising teenage resident of a refugee camp. Momo's older brother Ali has disappeared after going to work for the Americans at a secret desert base, and Momo wants Ellie's help in getting his brother back. We also get the point of view of Mutt the dog who narrates several chapters. Several other characters play supporting roles, including Momo's mother and father, a do-gooder social worker conducting research on the life of a teenage boy in a refugee camp, and a doctor who really isn't a doctor. This seems intended to be a satire on the absurdities of war, but, despite occasional witty one-liners, it never achieves the power of a novel like Catch 22, and instead dissolves into the absurdities of surrealism. I never got into this.½

It isn't often I read a book that picks up steam at the end instead of losing it. I'm glad I stuck with it. A clever fictional answer to the unsolved mystery of how and why Zia's plane went down.

Nice imagining of the last days of Zia Ul-Haq, Pakistani dictator from the 80s. He was a fixture on Indian TV screens growing up, with his evil little mustache and anti-Indian rhetoric. Anyway, the book's a good read and part of a new generation of South Asian fiction, finally free of colonialist influences and much more authentic.

Alice Bhatti est une jeune chrétienne, habitant à Karachi dans la Colonie Française, quartier pauvre de la ville où les habitants sont des intouchables, dont le travail est souvent de nettoyer les trottoirs de la ville.

Alice Bhatti, après un séjour de 14 mois au Borstal, prison pour les femmes et les enfants, veut se faire engager à l’hôpital du Sacré-Cœur en tant qu’infirmière, métier dont elle a suivi la formation avant la prison, comme on le découvrira dans la suite du roman. C’est sur son entretien d’embauche devant trois membres importants de l’hôpital, que s’ouvre le roman. Le docteur Pereira, directeur de l’hôpital, la Sœur Hina Alvi, infirmière-chef, et le médecin-chef sont très impressionnants pour la jeune femme ; Alice Bhatti débite tout le discours savamment préparé avec Noor, le secrétaire du Dr Pereira, qu’elle a connu en prison. Celui-ci s’est proposé de faire tous les petits travaux de l’hôpital pour qu’en échange sa mère, Zainab, soit soignée de ses trois cancers. Noor est amoureux d’Alice, même si elle est beaucoup plus vieille que lui et a peu de chances de le remarquer.

Elle va finalement être recrutée à l’hôpital et commencé à exercer son métier. C’est pour nous l’occasion de découvrir la société pakistanaise : l’extrême pauvreté, l’art de la débrouille, l’art de soigner (ou de le faire croire) sans médicament, les inégalités, la corruption par exemple, mais surtout la manière dont on considère les femmes comme des quantités négligeables, surtout quand elles sont catholiques. Sauf qu’Alice Bhatti n’est pas une femme qui se laisse faire, c’est d’ailleurs ce qui lui vaudra son séjour en prison. Elle n’hésite pas à mutiler les parties intimes des hommes qui souhaitent des fellations par exemple.

Noor est « ami » avec Teddy Butt, haltérophile médaillé, est un collaborateur non-officiel de la police, et plus particulièrement d’une unité qui n’obéit pas aux règles. Il s’agit d’arrêter quelqu’un, par toutes les manières possibles, pas forcément le coupable et lui faire comprendre qu’il ne faut pas recommencer. C’est le travail de Teddy Butt qui réussit la plupart du temps puisqu’il tue souvent le client. Teddy Butt est aussi un homme au cœur tendre et tombe amoureux d’Alice Bhatti. Il lui fait la cour de manière maladroite. Elle n’est pas vraiment amoureuse. Il est musulman ; elle est catholique. Malgré tout cela (la différence religieuse étant en plus mal vue), ils vont se marier et commencer leur vie commune, avec toutes les incompréhensions que cela entraîne.

Le livre est construit (la plupart du temps) par une alternance des points de vue de Noor. d’Alice Bhatti et Teddy Butt. Cela confère un certain dynamisme au livre, où il faut le dire on ne s’ennuie jamais. C’est à mon avis dû à deux choses : l’humour de l’auteur, et accessoirement de ses personnages, et la situation tout simplement. Les gens sont très pauvres, ne peuvent prendre la situation qu’avec philosophie et humour, au risque de devenir fou ou dépressif. En plus de par la construction, le dynamisme du livre est assuré par, là aussi, la situation. Il n’y a aucun répit, personne ne se repose jamais dans ce roman, tellement les problèmes surgissent les uns après les autres.

C’est le premier roman pakistanais que je lis et je suis plutôt contente de mon choix. Outre que c’est un bon roman, je trouve que cela donne un bon aperçu de la vie à Karachi, comme l’a révélé l’affaire Asia Bibi.

My brain feels a little scrambled right now. I thought I knew what I was getting with this book and, for the first two thirds, I did get that, more or less: an ironic satire on the modern cycle of war and international aid. We’re introduced to the bleak aftermath of war in a remote corner of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Smart, ambitious teenager Momo has dreams of becoming a billionaire entrepreneur, fuelled by the stories he’s read in his dad’s magazine about the Fortune 500. But how’s a kid to get started in a place like this, where even the aid workers have given up and drifted away, and the local American air base has shut up shop? To make matters worse, Momo’s big brother has been missing for months, his dog Mutt has got himself electrocuted, and an American pilot has just wandered in from the desert. And what of those red birds? Well, that’s where it all gets more than a little weird...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/11/04/red-birds-mohammed-hanif/½

Major Ellie is a fighter pilot who is shot down in the desert in an unnamed country. After several days, near to death, he finds shelter in the refugee camp he was sent to bomb. He is rescued by Momo, a young man who is eager to begin his career in entrepreneurship, even though he lives in a camp where there is nothing left to sell, or even steal.

Momo’s dog, Mutt, (who is shown rather more concern than Ellie, perhaps deservedly so) is a wise observer of all the goings-on in the camp, with a sound observation of Momo’s family, the major, and the woman Momo’s mother calls Lady Flowerbody, a western aid worker who is apparently conducting research there.

Narrating dog aside, this initially feels like a realist narrative with some nice satirical touches, like Momo’s use of business jargon gleaned from intermittent TV and the occasional copy of Forbes. Ellie realises the inadequacy of his cultural awareness training, Momo looks for ways to co-opt Lady Flowerbody to his schemes, his father continues to perform his duties for the military, even though they left and stopped paying him some time ago. Underlying it all is a sense of both grief and the relentless desire to survive, even in the most hopeless of circumstances.

Gradually, you realise that all is not all it seems. The mysterious Hangar, where Momo’s brother went to work and never returned, the absent military, some elements of Ellie’s story that don’t quite make sense, lead to an awareness that this is a world where all is not quite as it appears.

I really enjoyed the early part of the novel, the absurdist humour, the vivid characters. For me the end, where things should have moved faster, felt a little too drawn out. However I did find myself thinking about this book, and what it meant, for several days after I’d read it.
*
I received a copy of Red Birds from the publisher via Netgalley.
Read more of my reviews on my blog at https://katevane.com

There is a reason he did not win any prizes for this book. It does have some very funny and scathing observances in it but not enough to save the novel from being either boring, senseless or both. I had to force myself to finish because he has such a great reputation - I really thought it would all come together in the end. Sadly, not for this reader.

Hanif tells a fictional tale of what caused the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia, the military dictator of Pakistan who overthrew Bhutto. Hanif weaves two assassination plots together - one a revenge killing by an air force office, Ali Shigri, who holds Zia accountable for the alleged suicide of his father, a high ranking Officer; the other the Iago-like machinations of one of the generals plotting to succeed Zia. While this was supposedly a black comedy, can't say I found much to laugh about, particularly when it came to the treatment of female rape victims, summary executions of a union leader and torture of two of the main characters in the story.½

Mohammed Hanif does a superb job of highlighting the prejudices of our society. A gripping book, gets somewhat harrowing at times but powerful nonetheless.

Funny at parts..makes you LoL :) dragged a bit towards the end but on the whole a very nice read. Good mix of facts and fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and found it by no means lacking in characterization or plot. it comes in the up market genre. I applaud Mohammad Hanif for tackling an ignored segment of Pakistani society so well. I relished the writing with its biting tone and comedic cynicism, and found the role of Alice to be heroic and unforgettable. All characters seem true to life as I personally knew someone like Joseph Bhatti and Alice Bhatti. very sad though true depiction of life in the slums in Pakistan.

The humour that made his first novel stand out is darker and lacking the razor sharpness but still strong. For me it was cast a little too narrowly to be truly successful, both in terms of characterisation and of territory explored. 6 Oct 2015½

This tells an account of how circumstances might conspire. General Zia, general and leader of Pakistan, died in a plane crash in August 1988. This tells a number of interweaving strands, each of which, independently, could account for the crash. It is largely narrated by young Ali Shigri, a trainee officer in the Pakistan airforce. His father was a colonel on the army and was found hanging in what was called suicide (but sounds like nothing of the sort). It is full of humour, but has a dark side. If the incidents in the books are indicative of things that have or did happen in the country,then it is a very sad indictment of affairs. The case of Blind Zenob is the most startling of these. She is imprisoned for fornication as she is unable to identify the men who she claimed raped her. Well being blind that would probably account for the failure to do so, yet she is in prison. Takes a very twisted sort of male logic to make that seem like a sensible turn of events.
Of all the ways that Zia might have died that come together in this book, I thought the crow was the one that appealed to me most.

I kind of really liked this book. At the beginning it was all satire and little (interesting) story, but this got balanced better over the subsequent chapters.

I liked the pace of the book, and the fact that the main, first person character knows so much that is not revealed to the reader, but only merely hinted at.

By the end of the book, I was surprised to find myself even feeling hooked to the story getting excited and thrilled by what was going on.

The insights you get in Pakistan during the reign of general Zia, and of course in the life of the general and his surroundings is really nice. One must beware of the line between fact and fiction which is often crossed in all directions with total disregard of the concept itself. :-)

Satire, humour, and pathos combine to create this quirky story involving junior nurse Alice Bhatti. It is outrageous, crude, ribald, tragic, wretched, yet reveals a poignant acceptance of an oppressive life. However, the characters lacked colour and failed to hold my interest.

There is no doubt that Mohammed Hanif is a master of juggling wit, irony, dry humour and the various problems in our society. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is an excellent example of that smooth juggle.

However, when compared to A Case of Exploding Mangoes, one does feel that this novel does not match up to it's predecessor's greatness in prose and style.

Still, it was a good read showing a very different perspective.

The best thing about Hanif Sahib's writing is that the reader is allowed to look through the eyes of various characters in various walks of life which gives the reader the opportunity to decide what is right and what is wrong and what is just what it is, rather than having the writer decide it for him/her. This gives the reader a sense of empowerment.

It is a joy to read his writing!

Wow! What a book! The last few chapters kept me awake till 2 in the morning and my teeth were quite nicely drilled into my jaw by the time I finished.So many plots and sub-plots and so well-handled! Had I been writing something like this it would have ended up becoimng one fine mess. But Mr.Hanif tried the end very neatly. Definitely one of the finest books I have read in this genre. Its was a joy to read such a thrilling and well-written book by a fellow countryman! Can't wait to read Our Lady of Alice Bhatti! :D