A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 6, 2008 - Fiction - 320 pages
A Washington Post, Rocky Mountain News, Boston Globe Best Book of the Year

Intrigue and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy trying its damnedest to happen.

Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide.Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators, including his cologne-bathed roommate, a hash-smoking American lieutenant, and a mango-besotted crow, Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
19
Section 3
30
Section 4
44
Section 5
61
Section 6
70
Section 7
75
Section 8
83
Section 21
196
Section 22
205
Section 23
212
Section 24
219
Section 25
226
Section 26
239
Section 27
240
Section 28
252

Section 9
91
Section 10
96
Section 11
101
Section 12
115
Section 13
128
Section 14
137
Section 15
149
Section 16
156
Section 17
169
Section 18
177
Section 19
184
Section 20
190
Section 29
258
Section 30
269
Section 31
276
Section 32
283
Section 33
287
Section 34
296
Section 35
300
Section 36
302
Section 37
305
Section 38
308
Section 39
325
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Mohammed Hanif runs the Urdu service of the BBC's World Service. He was in the Pakistani Air Force for seven years, and then a journalist in Pakistan, where he is also known as a playwright. He won the Board of Examiners top prize at the University of East Anglia this year for an excerpt from A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which is his first novel.

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