New Releases by Daniyal Mueenuddin

A stunning first novel from universally acclaimed Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose debut short story collection won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station. Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan, and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. From Afra, who rose from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster; to Saqib, an errand boy who is eventually trusted to lead his boss’s new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. Saqib’s boss, the wealthy landowner Hisham, reminisces about meeting his wife while she was dating his brother, while Gazala, a young teacher, falls for Saqib and his bold promises for their future before learning about his plans to skim money from the farm’s profits. In matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country. Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving, Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature.

Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a powerful collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan. An impoverished young woman becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress; an electrician on the make confronts his desperate assailant to protect his most prized possession; a farm manager rises far in the world—but his family discovers after his death the transience of power; a maid, who advances herself through sexual favours, unexpectedly falls in love. In these linked stories about the family and household staff of the ageing KK Harouni, we meet masters and servants, landlords and supplicants, politicians and electricians, village women, and Karachi housewives. Part Chekhov, part RK Narayan, these stories are dark and light, complex and humane; at heart about the relationship between the powerful and powerless, bound together in life—and in death. Together they make up a vivid portrait of a feudal world rarely brought alive in the English language. Sensuous, graceful, melancholy, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders gives you Pakistan as you have never seen it. It marks the debut of an amazing new talent.

Gjennom åtte fortellinger skildres de sammenflettede livene til en gruppe mennesker. Alle har et forhold til landeieren K.K. Harouni. Han eier et hus i Lahore og flere eiendommer i Punjab, men familiens økonomiske status er på vei nedover. Novellene gir innblikk i sterke sosiale motsetninger. Her møter vi for eksempel den grådige og korrupte elektrikeren og elskerinnen som blir satt på gaten når landeieren dør.

Bundel met acht verhalen die zich afspelen in de kring rondom een traditionele Pakistaanse landeigenaar.

A la fin des années soixante-dix, entre Lahore et Islamabad, tandis que décline l''ordre féodal du Pakistan une galerie inoubliable de serviteurs, de chauffeurs, de contremaîtres et de comptables gravite en huit histoires entrelacées autour de K K Harouni, propriétaire terrien, distant et négligent. Saleema a vingt-quatre ans quand elle tombe enceinte d''un vieux domestique qui finit par l''abandonner, avec son petit garçon, dans les rues de Lahore, à la mort de K.K. Harouni... Un jardinier est emprisonné et torturé par la police... La jeunesse dorée d''Islamabad n''est pas en reste avec la vie dissolue de Lily, qui cherche une rédemption dans les bras d''un jeune fermier trop sérieux dans un Pakistan postcolonial en cours d''implosion... A la lecture de ces fictions ciselées sur le Pakistan moderne où le bonheur est rare, le destin inévitable, et où chacun cherche sa place à l''heure où s''épuisent les traditions, on n''est pas sans penser à Tchekhov, voire aux Gens de Dublin de Joyce. Avec le même art du détail et la même passion pour ses personnages, Daniyal Mueenuddin fait une entrée retentissante en littérature. Ce recueil aux odeurs de poussière, de luxure, de mangues et de jasmin est en lice aux Etats-Unis pour le National Book Award (catégorie Fiction) 2009.