A Case of Exploding Mangoes Review

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A Case of Exploding Mangoes ReviewThis debut novel by Mohammed Hanif is witty, humorous and entertaining. What is astonishing about this novel is that many of its characters are real; a few of its important characters were alive until a decade ago, but have since departed. Also, many of the incidents and events narrated in this novel actually happened, and so those are based on fact; but the author has chosen to interpret these actions and events with humor, and painted them with unabashed sarcasm, and colored them with prodigious wit, and thereby he has transformed the grave incidents into very funny vignettes.
At the center of the novel is the death of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who was president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. On August 17, 1988, a C-130 Hercules plane carrying Zia ul-Haq crashes. On board were several Pakistani army generals, Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan, and all of them perish. They were returning to Islamabad from Punjab, where they had been to witness a tank demonstration. A few crates of ripe mangoes were loaded onto the plane before take off. Did one of the crates contain a canister of poison gas? The author wonders.
The main narrator of the novel is Ali Shigri, an Air Force Junior Officer, in the Pakistani Military. Ali Shigri's father, Col. Quili Shigri, has committed suicide, but Ali is convinced that his father did not commit suicide, and that he was actually murdered by General Zia. And so quite determined to kill the general, Ali hatches an elaborate plan to carry it.
In a very funny vignette, a lanky, bearded young man named OBL from Saudi Arabia attends a Fourth of July party given by Arnold Raphel in Islamabad. (He was invited to the party by the Americans!) OBL works for "Laden and Co. Constructions." Among the invited guests is the local C.I.A. chief, who tells Osama, "Nice meeting you, OBL. Good work, keep it up."
There is also an astonishing vignette about Zainab, a blind woman who is convicted of the crime of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, even though the adultery occurred when she was gang-raped. (I have read a similar incident in another Islamic country. There was international protest when the woman who was raped was sentenced to death by stoning.)
Mohammed Hanif's prose is spare but lucid. Even though it lacks the grandeur and splendor of Yann Martel's or Salman Rushdie's prose, it is spontaneous and highly readable:
"Anybody who breaks down at the sheer volume of this should stay in his little village and tend his father's goats or should study biology and become a doctor, and then they can have all the bloody peace and quiet they want. Because as a soldier, noise is the first thing you learn to defend yourself against, and as an officer, noise is the first weapon of attack you learn to use."
Because the author worked for the Pakistani Air Force for several years, his descriptions of army life and how Pakistan's army officers behave sound realistic and authentic.
This magnificent novel is born of an enormously talented writer. I understand that he is already working on his second novel. Reading "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" was a great joy.
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