Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes revisits the plane crash that killed Pakistan’s military dictator, General Zia ul Haq in 1988. Visiting in  alternate chapters the General himself and Under Officer Ali Shigri, a hilarious satirical picture is built up of a simple-minded dictator who relies on daily dips into the Quran to predict his future and of the boot-licking people who surround him.

Shigri is preparing a silent military drill but the disappearance of his room beloved roommate in a stolen plane leads to his arrest and to two months and seventeen days of imprisonment, torture and involvement with the four-star generals. He is the only one who walks away from the fatal plane, claiming that he has committed the crime.

However, the delightfully funny novel presents us with a number of other candidates for the perpetration of the assassination – if it was one: the CIA are interested in dispatching Zia and yet the US Ambassador is on the plane;  all the generals have sufficient motives, yet all but one of the important ones are also on the plane. There is a blind woman with a motive, an angry First Lady and even a crow, as well as a lethal air-conditioning system and a few cases of poisoned mangoes. Even the pilot has reason to loathe the dictator.

This darkly comic book was published by Vintage Books in 2008, and has been nominated for a number of literary prizes.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.