Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir

by Fatima Bhutto

Overview

In September 1996, fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother, while shots rang out in the dark outside the family home in Karachi. This was the night her father Murtaza was murdered. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best-known political dynasties.

Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of a family of feudal landlords who became powerbrokers. It is an epic tale of intrigue, the making of modern Pakistan, and ultimately, tragedy. A searing testament to a troubled land, Songs of Blood and Sword reveals a daughter's love for her father and her search to uncover the truth of his life and death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568586762
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	542,062
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Fatima Bhutto studied at Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. An acclaimed poet and journalist, she currently writes columns for the Daily Beast, New Statesman, and other publications. She lives in Karachi.

Editorial Reviews

…[Bhutto's] book will be valuable to readers who want to understand why Pakistan is such an ungovernable mess. In her account, the country's entire political culture is based on corruption, violence, opportunism, mendacity and a feudal economic system.
—The Washington Post

Thomas W. Lippman

"Bhuttos very rarely, even then, died natural deaths," Bhutto writes, speaking of her great-great-grandfather. And so it seems in this family history lived on a stage of national and international intrigue. A grandfather, Zulifar Ali Bhutto, executed; an uncle, Shanawaz Bhutto, murdered; a father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, assassinated; and an aunt, Benazir Bhutto, assassinated; all inhabit this utterly fascinating blend of intimate but diligently researched family memoir and complex political history. The four decades from Fatima's grandfather's service as foreign minister in the 1960s to her aunt's assassination in 2007 encompass most of the history of Pakistan. Fatima covers its alliances, its wars, its coups, its treaties, its corruption, its inefficiency, its repression. The family's public political triumphs and tragedies are set within their private pleasures and painful quarrels--a life of power and a life in exile, falling in love and being imprisoned, the ease of wealth for happy childhoods and the anguish of adult separation so severe that Fatima holds her aunt Benazir culpable in her father's assassination. Partisan and controversial as aspects of it are, Fatima Bhutto's book is a lucid and engaging account of a nation and a family. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

William Dalrymple, Financial Times
“Moving, witty . . . a uniquely fascinating, wonderfully well-constructed memoir.”

Sir Bob Geldof
“The Bhuttos are an Asian Borgia or Plantagenet dynastic family. This then is an important and timely book offering a rare insight into the violent world of Pakistani politics told by a direct witness. It’s also the story of a daughter’s love for her murdered father and many other members of her family. Power not only corrupts—it kills.”           
 
The Independent
“A story with dazzling twists and turns told by a true-blue member of the Bhutto fold.”
 
Irish Times
“Political intrigue, administrative corruption and widespread avarice, refracted through a narrative of family history and sibling hostilities, make Songs of Blood and Sword read like a darker version of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.” 
 
Charles Glass, former ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent, author of Tribes with Flags and Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation.

From the Publisher

Writer and poet Fatima Bhutto is a member of one of Pakistan's most newsworthy and controversial political families. As niece to former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter to former president and prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she has witnessed her relatives' tumultuous rise to political power and their violent, sudden deaths. Now Bhutto attempts a memoir framed by the assassination of her father, former foreign minister Mir Murtaza Bhutto. Yet what she creates is less of an autobiography and more of a sweeping political history and biography of the Bhutto family (with a special emphasis on her father's life). Bhutto assumes her readers possess a certain degree of knowledge of Pakistani politics and her family's public life. As a result, her book can be a bit laborious at times, particularly when she works through the intricacies of Pakistani government and foreign relations. Thankfully, her family portraits are engaging enough to keep her story moving forward. VERDICT Although not ideal for lovers of memoirs, Bhutto's book will appeal to those familiar enough with world politics to have an interest in the intimate details of Bhutto family life.—Veronica Arellano, California, MD

Library Journal