Everyone seemed very excited by the book choices this month which is great to hear!
Before we get to the vote, here’s another Pakistani cookbook I just started with which I’ve already fallen in love. The author is a Karachiite born and raised in the city of lights. [Karachi, Pakistan became known as the City of Lights in the 1960s because of its vibrant nightlife.] However, her family originally hails from Agra, India which is the city of the Taj Mahal. Both of her parents' families migrated to Karachi after the partition in 1948.
Available on Kindle Unlimited, Virsa, A Culinary Journey from Agra to Karachi (view on Amazon) includes heartfelt stories about growing up in a foodie family coupled with over 100 simple & authentic Pakistani family heirloom recipes that have been passed down over generations.
What also makes this cookbook so special is that compiling, recreating, & photographing these recipes were a labor of love for the author serving as a dedication to her mother. The photographs are also beautiful as you can tell by the cover here.
As Maira Zafa notes, “covering everything from dry spice mix to snacks to lentils, vegetables, meat dishes, & dessert, this cookbook is a visual & culinary treat.”
But what book are we reading?
From the author of the acclaimed A Case of Exploding Mangoes (view on Amazon) comes a subversively, often shockingly funny new novel set in steaming Karachi.
The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle. Alice Bhatti may be just what they’re looking for. She’s the new junior nurse, but that’s the only ordinary thing about her. She’s just been released from the Borstal Jail for Women and Children. But more to the point, she’s the daughter of a part-time healer in the French Colony, Karachi’s infamous Christian slum, and it seems she has, unhappily, inherited his part-time gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice begins to bring succor to the patients lining the hospital’s corridors and camped outside its gates. But all is not miraculous. Alice is a Christian in an Islamic world, ensnared in the red tape of hospital bureaucracy, trapped by the caste system, torn between her duty to her patients, her father and her husband—who is a former bodybuilding champion, now an apprentice to the nefarious “Gentleman’s Squad” of the Karachi police, and about to drag Alice into a situation so dangerous that perhaps not even a miracle will be able to save them. But, of course, Alice Bhatti is no ordinary young woman . . .
At once a high comedy of errors and a searing illumination of the seemingly unchangeable role of women in Pakistan’s lower-caste society, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a resounding confirmation of Mohammed Hanif’s gifts of storytelling and of razor-sharp social satire.
“Relentlessly readable. A comedy for those who think, a tragedy for those who feel. . . . Hanif does Karachi better than Rushdie does Bombay.” —The Guardian
”Rambunctious, vulgar, funny, and moving, Alice Bhatti wields enormous emotional punch. . . The world could do with more books that portray Pakistanis this way.” —Time
“Belly-laugh-inducing. Sam Lypsyte funny. Faulty-Towers funny. The silliness is anarchic and profound...a ripping story and a rowdy piece of art.” —The New York Times
“An amusingly anarchic tale of Karachi life so alive with sensations that you can smell the sewers, hear the screeching of tyres, and feel the humidity.” —The Scotsman
(Group read suggestion from Sue Attalla, book club moderator.)
View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book
Find the above book interesting?
Join our online book club in Facebook if you haven’t already. You can post on any bookish topic including, but not limited to, global reads. And at the end of January, we’ll be discussing the Pakistani book above in an online event for 5 days which you can pop in & out of at any time.