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.)