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Sheheryar B. Sheikh pens a dark satire on Pakistan’s political structures

| @indiablooms | Sep 17, 2024, at 12:15 am

Kolkata, Aug 8 (UNI) Pakistan's chequered and volatile history can be a good source material for any author.

Canada-based Sheheryar B. Sheikh taps into these resources again to pen his second novel 'Call Me Al The Hero's Ha Ha Journey'.

In it, Sheikh skillfully charts the journey of Altamaash, the entertainer, who misstepped on to history’s stage to become a politician and created a lifetime’s worth of chaos and destruction in Pakistan.

Now exiled to a London mansion, abandoned even by sycophants, Al yearns to relive the glory days of his rise to power.

But the old guard has passed and the colonial hangover in his home country has almost disappeared. Democracy is taking root, and with it is coming a fragile stability to the Third World.

In these times Al’s desire for doing his best – what’s worst for the rest of us – flows into two acts of massive evil: one double-murder that shakes his own complacent party back to full attention and a countrywide riot – the biggest the world has ever witnessed.

All this Al orchestrates while perched luxuriously in exile in the UK. Woe to the day when he returns to claim the bloodstained crown. But cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Sheheryar B. Sheikh’s new novel is a ripping rollercoaster ride through shenanigans of subcontinental politics, and it will keep one riveted.

Publisher HarperCollins described Sheikh's second offering as... Mangoes meets Midnight’s Children;

Midnight’s Children meets Crime and Punishment;
Crime and Punishment meets V for Vendetta;
V for Vendetta meets The Hunger Games...

'The Still Point of The Turning World', Sheheryar B. Sheikh's first book--which too dealt with Pakistan, was published by HarperCollins India in 2017.

Sheikh, who won the Steve Tomasula's La Vie de Boheme Award and a Nicholas Sparks Scholarship, has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame. He was nominated for the all-Pakistan Getz Pharma Prize.


 

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