The Upstairs Wife The Upstairs Wife

The Upstairs Wife

An Intimate History of Pakistan

    • 4.4 • 5 Ratings
    • $13.99
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

A memoir of Karachi through the eyes of its women

An Indies Introduce Debut Authors Selection 

 
For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country’s former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi—Bhutto’s birthplace and Pakistan’s other great metropolis—Rafia Zakaria’s family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her Uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death. In that moment these twin catastrophes—one political and public, the other secret and intensely personal—briefly converged. 
 
Zakaria uses that moment to begin her intimate exploration of the country of her birth. Her Muslim-Indian family immigrated to Pakistan from Bombay in 1962, escaping the precarious state in which the Muslim population in India found itself following the Partition. For them, Pakistan represented enormous promise. And for some time, Zakaria’s family prospered and the city prospered. But in the 1980s, Pakistan’s military dictators began an Islamization campaign designed to legitimate their rule—a campaign that particularly affected women’s freedom and safety. The political became personal when her aunt Amina’s husband, Sohail, did the unthinkable and took a second wife, a humiliating and painful betrayal of kin and custom that shook the foundation of Zakaria’s family but was permitted under the country’s new laws. The young Rafia grows up in the shadow of Amina’s shame and fury, while the world outside her home turns ever more chaotic and violent as the opportunities available to post-Partition immigrants are dramatically curtailed and terrorism sows its seeds in Karachi.
 
Telling the parallel stories of Amina’s polygamous marriage and Pakistan’s hopes and betrayals, The Upstairs Wife is an intimate exploration of the disjunction between exalted dreams and complicated realities.

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
RELEASED
2015
February 3
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
264
Pages
PUBLISHER
Beacon Press
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
6.9
MB

More Books Like This

Her Father's Daughter Her Father's Daughter
2013
Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar
2012
In Search of Amrit Kaur In Search of Amrit Kaur
2023
Memoirs of an Arabian Princess Memoirs of an Arabian Princess
2009
Farewell to Salonica Farewell to Salonica
2012
Strange Bewildering Time Strange Bewildering Time
2023

More Books by Rafia Zakaria

Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption
2021
Veil Veil
2017
Feminismo zuriaren aurka Feminismo zuriaren aurka
2023
Contra el feminismo blanco Contra el feminismo blanco
2022
Contro il femminismo bianco Contro il femminismo bianco
2023
Amidst the Debris Amidst the Debris
2021

Customers Also Bought

Klara and the Sun Klara and the Sun
2021
Educated Educated
2018
Little Fires Everywhere Little Fires Everywhere
2017
American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club) American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club)
2020
The Four Winds The Four Winds
2021
The Last Thing He Told Me The Last Thing He Told Me
2021