The Wish Maker

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Overview

A major new international voice debuts with a sweeping story of love, friendship, and family ties that brings to life the turbulent world of modern Pakistan.

The unforgettable story of a fatherless boy growing up in a household of outspoken women, The Wish Maker is also a tale of sacrifice, betrayal, and indestructible friendship. Zaki Shirazi and his female cousin Samar Api were raised to consider themselves "part of the same litter." Together they watched American television and memorized dialogue from Bollywood movies, attended dangerous protests, and formed secret friendships. In a household run by Zaki's crusading political journalist mother and iron-willed grandmother, it was impossible to imagine a future that could hold anything different for either of them.

But adolescence approaches and the cousins' fates diverge. Samar's unconventional behavior-in which Zaki has played the role of devoted helper-brings severe consequences for her, while Zaki is sent out to discover the world for himself. It is only after years of separation from Samar that he is forced to confront the true nature of happiness, selfhood, and commitment to those he loves most.

Chronicling world-changing events that have never been so intimately observed in fiction and brimming with unmistakable warmth and humor, The Wish Maker is the powerful account of a family and an era, a story that shows how, even in the most rapidly shifting circumstances, there are bonds that survive the tugs of convention, time, and history.

Ali Sethi

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The turbulence of contemporary Pakistani politics is refracted through the intimate prism of a fractious extended family in this mature debut, written when the author was 23. Twenty-year-old Zaki Shirazi, his military father dead before he was born, is raised with his rebellious female cousin Samar Api in a Lahore household dominated by his liberal mother, Zakia, editor of a crusading women's magazine, and his strong-willed, culturally conservative grandmother, Daadi. The nimble two-track narrative shifts between post-9/11, when Zaki returns from college in Massachusetts for Samar's wedding, and his childhood in the early 1990s, around the time then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was deposed, an act that polarized the country. The political background frames Sethi's complex narrative, but the primary focus is on the family's relatively privileged-and often as argumentative as it is loving-household, providing Western readers with an insider's atmospheric take on a culture and a country much in the news these days. (June)

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From The Critics

With this first-rate novel, Sethi joins an ever-expanding roster of gifted young Pakistani writers who, after graduating from Western universities, have returned home with an urgent need to explain their misunderstood country to a global audience…Though distinctly restrained, Sethi's prose evokes the comic mislocutions of Jonathan Safran Foer and the vertiginous mania of Zadie Smith.
—The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781594488757
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Publication date: 6/11/2009
Pages: 432
Product dimensions: 6.42 (w) x 9.24 (h) x 1.38 (d)

Meet the Author

Ali Sethi

Ali Sethi grew up in Pakistan. A recent graduate of Harvard College, he has contributed to The New York Times and The Nation, among other publications.

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lolita12

Posted August 3, 2009

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An Incredible Debut - Personal, Stirring, and even Comic

A childhood story so personal it wasn't until the end that I remember it is not an autobiography. I was even more surprised to learn Ali Sethi is only 25 (like Carson McCullers who wrote her surprising debut at the age or 23).

The setting is 1980's and modern-day Pakistan, amidst political chaos - from when generals ruled through censorship, torture, and fear to Bhutto's democratic, yet tumultuous leadership, and finally to a culturally-diverse Massachusetts college.

We follow Zaki through a childhood surrounded by strong, opinionated women (his father dies as a Pakistani Air Force pilot before he is even born). He grows up alongside his romantic cousin, Samir Api, sharing secrets and heartbreaks. His liberal, outspoken mother publishes the Women's Journal and is even arrested with Zaki during a demonstration. There is the simple, sweet housemaid, Naseem, who watches sports on TV and talks about faith and God, and of course the conservative and opposing paternal grandmother - Daadi - and her two always-agreeable daughters, Suri & Hukmi, Zaki's aunts.

The result is a narrator who takes in a 360-degree point of view of the world that opens up our eyes.
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literarymuse

Posted June 15, 2009

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Compensation for Revolution!

Pakistan in the 1990's - a time of encroaching Western culture intermingling with traditional ways, sometimes in strident conflict, sometimes winning with subtlety, sometimes being quashed by the more fundamentalist Islamic and political violence. This is the world of Zaki Shirazi, a boy caught between both extremes of obedience to the old or new, and his cousin, Samar Api. It is the latter's voice that serves as the protagonist in this richly descriptive tale of Pakistani life. While the plot develops quite slowly, the description of clothing, jewelry, food, flowers, forests, stores, bazaars, and more are the highlights of the lengthy descriptions offered to the reader, a panoply of sensory elements one begins to actually imagine as being real in one's own world.

Smatterings of history enter with mixed to the Bhutto government and demise, the Muslim suffering in the Bosnian War and so much more. Little by little, the reader begins to realize what a "revolution" to democracy really means to people uneducated and unwilling initially to challenge the despotic status quo. Education, though, teaches one to "see" in new ways, as the narrator muses. In another place, the evolution into a new government and new way of living resembles an appropriately offered metaphor of courting squirrels chasing an erratic spiral down the bark of a tree. You decide which characters are scrambling or sauntering down that tough, bark-like journey to a changed Pakistan.

In another place, the reader is shocked when marriages borne out of love don't survive, an event that forces the reader to realize the enigma of embracing Western culture, a force that sometimes yields effects and affects far beyond the imagination.

The Wish Maker has been compared to Kite Runner, but this reviewer thinks that is like comparing apples and oranges, the latter a more violent foray into revolution and the former a sweeter, full, rich journey through ordinary, every-day life in a world unique to itself and still in the throes of change to this day. More about political and religious conflict would have filled this novel out, not for readers wanting sensationalism and stereotypical ideas confirmed, but for the essence of what opposing sides really thought and said during these notably challenging times in Pakistan's 1990s.

Interesting story, with a portrait-like presentation of people and their little-known but fascinating world!

Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on June 15, 2009
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Anonymous

Posted October 2, 2009

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The Wish Maker

Available on NOOK devices and apps

Overview

All Available Formats + Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Ali Sethi

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

From The Critics

Product Details

Meet the Author

Ali Sethi

Rating Distribution

An Incredible Debut - Personal, Stirring, and even Comic

Compensation for Revolution!