Catch Hold Of A Case Of Exploding Mangoes By Mohammed Hanif Delivered In Leaflet

book has mouldered at thespot on my toread list for four years, It exited in that unhappy limbo of not being available from the library yet not being exciting enough to make me want to buy it.
Since moving to England, Ive started trying to work my way through the oldest books on my list, so I gave in and bought this cheaply.
Its hard to remember why I wanted to read it in the first placeI think I saw it at the bookstore, thought it was interesting, but tried to exercise some selfcontrol and not buy it.


A Case of Exploding Mangoes takes place during a period of time about which I have little knowledge: the late half of the twentieth century.
Actually, its set a year before my birth, I enjoy reading historical fiction from this period, precisely because I like learning more about the events that preceded me, Mohammed Hanif weaves two parallel narratives, Ali Shigri is the son of a famous, now deceased, officer in the Pakistan Army, and he has a plan to kill the President, General Zia.
The second half of the story follows Zia himself, with brief interludes that expose the perspectives of the First Lady and Zias right and lefthand men.
Everything builds towards a final, climactic chapter in which Zia boards a boobytrapped plane, gets poisoned, and suffers from a tapeworm eating his internal organs.
Yeah. Its intense.

This book took me longer to read than it should have, It took me longer to appreciate than I would have liked, Trouble is, Hanif takes a while to show us whats so fascinating about these characters, At first glance, Ali is a selfentitled, somewhat cocky young man who thinks he has it all figured out, At first glance, Zia is a slightly crazy military dictator with pretensions of piety, But rather than being humourous, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is mediocre at first,

Thankfully, it doesnt stay mediocre, As the story develops, Ali and Zias stories become more fascinatingZias in particular, I found myself yearning to learn what crazy decision Zia would make next, I was less enthralled with Alis arc, but I still wanted to find out what would happen to him, and how he ended up nearly on the same plane as General Zia.


In both stories, the principal themes are ones of isolation and meditation upon corruption, Pakistan, barelyyears into its existence, groans beneath the military bureaucracy driving the country forward, Ali is trapped within a system just as oppressive as the Soviet government against which Pakistan fights, Zia, despite being the leader of that system, is trapped by it as well, At one point he attempts to go among his people in disguise, and his sojourn is an epic fail, He barely makes it out of the gates of his compound before running into trouble,

In Alis case, he is isolated by his role as a cadet in Pakistans army, He is disconnected from his past as a peasant growing up in the hills, something reminded to him by fellow prisoner the SecretaryGeneral, Since following his fathers footsteps, Ali has become the sort of person who shouts at “strength”, practises silent drills, and salutes on command, The SecretaryGeneral accuses him of “selling out” and collaborating, Ali denies this vociferously, and to some extent Id side with himhe is planning to kill General Zia, after all, Nevertheless, theres a definite sense that he has lived outside the sphere of reality too long, firmly ensconced in the denial of the military.


Similarly, Zia is in the ineviable position of being so powerful that no one wants to tell him the truth, Everyone feeds him the information they think will make him happy, His intelligence service

and propaganda puppets spread paranoid conspiracy theories whenever they feel the need to discredit the latest attacks against him, I also love how Hanif portrays the corrupt and complicated relationship between the United States and Pakistan, particularly when it comes to the CIAs involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan.


Hanifs approach to the ending of the storyand therefore its beginning as wellmirrors this sense of uncertainty, this inability to distinguish between realities and fictions because of poor information.
The book begins by asking how Zia actually died, His plane exploded, yes, but was that the cause Perhaps it was something elsepoison, or a tapeworm, or a bomb planted by the CIA Hanif admirably demonstrates how even events that history seems to have recorded a certain way have wiggle room for conspiracies, alternatives, and wild speculation.
He does it all in jest, however, avoiding any overtones of wildeyed conspiracy theorizing,

Overall, I can safely say I enjoyed A Case of Exploding Mangoes, but that reading it after leaving it to languish for four years probably contributed to a mild case of anticlimactic ennui.
Its just not remarkable enough to live up to any expectations that lingered in my mind, Im not sorry I read it, though, and depending on your tastes, this might suit you even better than it did me,

sitelink "A charred page of a slim book, a hand gripping the spine, a thumb with a halfgrown nail inserted firmly into the last page"

The guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished.
That's the world we live in, "
A Case of Exploding Mangoes Political satire,

I am an avid reader of both 'Global' and Historical fiction so this book should have been right up my street, Instead it took me weeks to read and I omly completed it because I was discussing it in a book group,
I did not enjoy it at all, It was certainly not 'very, very funny', as advertised,
I was not alone in my views eitherout ofother readers at the discussion felt the same way,
Although I hate to categorise books, we felt that this was a book that would be more appealing to male readers,

The central character is Ali Shigri, an officer in the Pakistani army, like his father before him,
Ali knows his father did not commit suicide and he is determined to settle the score with President Zia,
Several other characters are involved including his gay room mate, certain American CIA officials and folk from high up the Pakistani political ladder.
Even Osama bin Ladin makes a brief appearance as the obnoxious OBL, No characters were likeable, all were crooked and I didn't really care who came down in the plane by the end of the book.


Well suited to lovers of political satire but not at all my choice of book,
A book like this could never have been written during the lifetime of General Zia ul Haq,Pakistan's dictator for eleven years, What Zia would have done to the author,would not have been very pleasant,

So,the author took his time and the book appeared twenty years after Zia's death,at a time when there was unprecdented freedom of expression in the country,and anyone could say anything.


The book is full of vicious invective directed at General Zia,the ruthless strongman is presented as a caricature, The author does not even spare Zia's wife,there are lots of crude jokes,

He mocks everything,Zia's generals,the American ambassador,even Osama Bin Laden makes an appearance, The author also has a lot of fun at the expense of Zia, for his supposed infatuation with American socialite,Joanne Herring,

The book is written in the background of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and seems to have been inspired by two other books on the subject,Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile and Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.


The author was a former air force cadet in real life,who didn't manage to graduate, But half the book is the story of a cadet,Ali Shigri,who is planning to kill Zia to avenge his father's death, He falls under suspicion and is arrested before being released, This part of the story bored me,it fills up the pages with impressions from his PAF academy days,

The author re imagines Zia's last days and his increasing worries about his security, That makes for a compelling read,this part of the story is a page turner,

The author certainly seems to take particular delight in Zia's eventual assassinationAugust,when his plane crashed,takingpeople to their deaths.


It was suspected that gas from a case of mangoes had incapacitated the pilots and caused the crash, What actually happened and who assassinated Zia,remains a mystery to this day,

It is a remarkable work of fiction and vicious political satire, It is another matter that making a mockery of a case of mass murder is not something,which is in good taste, .