August 23, 2010
"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.
October 1, 2010
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
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 15, 2010
A memoir/political history of Pakistan's famous feuding political dynasty, penned by a young family member whose father, grandfather, uncle and aunt all met violent deaths.
Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer Bhutto begins with the career of her grandfather, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was assassinated in 1979. The focus of the book, however, is on the life and career of her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, a Western-educated political exile determined to avenge the death of his father, and whose return to Pakistan in 1993 challenged the regime of his sister Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister. The author's early memories of her aunt are tender, but over time her views altered sharply and she now places moral responsibility for her father's death—he was shot by Pakistani police in 1996—on her aunt and Benazir's husband, current Pakistan president Asif Zardari. To gather information and photographs, the author searched through family diaries and letters, official documents and newspaper reports, and interviewed old friends, family, acquaintances and political associates, not only in Pakistan but in Europe and across Asia. She includes excerpts from her grandfather's and her father's letters to their children, and a more-than-generous number of family photos, both formal and candid. If Bhutto is tough on certain family members, she is equally so on her country, "a nuclear-armed state that cannot run refrigerators," and on its largest city, Karachi, "overcrowded, underdeveloped, and poor," with a police force "perpetually violent and corrupt." According to the author, the United States has long interfered in Pakistani politics, sending billions of dollars to support criminal regimes for its own political and economic advantage, and currently sending drones that kill innocent schoolchildren in the name of the fight against terrorists. Bhutto is sure she knows who the bad guys are, and she does not hesitate to name them. She provides vivid portraits of life in an extended upper-class family and of enduring bloody feuds, brutality and death, but fair-and-balanced reporting is not on offer in this highly personal account by a journalist on a mission.
A bleak, disturbing picture of a country of strategic importance to American foreign policy.
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September 1, 2010
The tense first chapter of this moving memoir ends with the announcement, Your fathers been shot. Fatima was 14 in 1996 when her beloved father, Mir Murtazi Bhutto, was murdered by police in Karachi. Her grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan, was executed in 1979. One aunt was murdered in 1985, and another aunt, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007. Was Benazir involved in the murder of Fatimas father? With the account of her dynastic family and their bloody battles, Bhutto weaves in the politics of Pakistan and its foreign relations, including those with the U.S., the Middle East, and China. Exposing the corruption of the present leadership and the military, she is passionate about how fundamentalist religion is used to thwart democracy. Was her grandfather removed for attempting to bring in some semblance of democracy? Can a dynasty introduce democracy? With the current arguments about the role of the U.S. in Afghanistan and in nuclear-armed Pakistan, this fierce insiders view will have a wide readership, both angry and sympathetic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)