In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a powerful collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan. An impoverished young woman becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress; an electrician on the make confronts his desperate assailant to protect his most prized possession; a farm manager rises far in the world — but hisfamily discovers after his death the transience of power; a maid who advances herself through sexual favors, unexpectedly falls in love. In these linked stories about the family and household staff of the ageing kkharouni, we meet masters and servants, landlords and supplicants, politicians and electricians, village womenand karachi housewives. Part chekhov, part R K Narayan, these stories are dark and light, complex and humane; at heart about the relationship between the powerful and powerless, bound together in life — and in death. Together they make up a vivid portrait of a feudal world rarely brought alive in the english language. Sensuous, graceful, melancholy,in other rooms, other wonders gives you pakistan as you have never seen it. It marks the debut of anamazing new talent.