Daniyal Mueenuddin
publisher
WW Norton
format
Paperback
pages
256
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John Steinbeck
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Elena Gorokhova
Because of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Rohinton Mistry, to mention just a few of the most prominent authors, American readers have long been able to enjoy one terrific Indian novel after another. But Daniyal Mueenuddin's IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, is likely to be the first book by a Pakistani writer. Mueenuddin spent his early childhood in Pakistan and then lived in the United States - he attended Groton, Dartmouth and Yale Law - and has since returned to his father's homeland where he an d his wife now manage a farm in Khanpur. These eight connected stories, linking us to the household of a wealthy and self-satisfied landowner named K. K. Harouni, show us what life is like for both the rich and the desperately poor in Mueenuddin's country.
Many of Mueenuddin's stories conform to a common dynamic: we learn about a character's past, then zero in on the central crisis of his or her life, and even while we expect more development, suddenly find everything wound up in a paragraph or two. The epigraph to IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, is a Punjabi proverb: "Three things for which we kill - Land, women, and gold." Throughout the book, the Harounis are gradually selling off their ancestral lands to pay for business losses and a Eurotrash lifestyle.
In Mueenuddin's Pakistan, happiness is short-lived. On every page there are wonderful, surprising observations and details. This is a collection full of pleasures; the writing has a clarifying beauty and Mueenuddin's gifts of insight into human behavior are rendered with nuance and authenticity.
DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, The Best American Short Stories 2008, selected by Salman Rushdie, and the forthcoming PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories 2010. For a number of years he practiced law in New York. He now lives on a farm in Pakistan’s southern Punjab.
Beyond the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Also named one of the Top Ten Books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly, TIME, New Statesman, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, and The Economist.
"Reading Daniyal Mueenuddin's mesmerizing first collection is like watching a game of blackjack, the shrewd players calculating their way beyond their dealt cards in an attempt to beat the dealer...In this labyrinth of power games and exploits, Mueenuddin instills luminous glimmers of longing, loss and, most movingly, unfettered love."
- THE NEW YORK TIMES
"The eight short stories of Daniyal Mueenuddin's enchanting debut are dreamlike, illuminating contemporary Pakistan's societal contradictions in prose as clear and serene as the contradictions themselves are subtle and tumultuous. "
- BOSTON GLOBE
"His prose, never flashy, neither sentimentalizes the poor nor demonizes the rich, but noses out the humanity of each. It is probably a mistake to lavish too much praise on a first book, but given the power and beauty and deeply affecting quality of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, I can't stop myself from wondering if Pakistan has found its Chekhov."
- MIAMI SUN-SENTINAL
"Much as Isaac Bashevis Singer recreated the lost Jewish shtetl in many of his short stories, Mr. Mueenuddin unveils a nuanced world where social status and expectations are understood without being stated, and where poverty and the desire to advance frame each critical choice."
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Daniyal Mueenuddin's masterful debut collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, reveals a modern Pakistan that is as beautiful as it is brutal...[His] work evokes 19th-century Russian masters like Turgenev and Gogol, along with the Southern Gothic tradition of Faulkner and Truman Capote...Mueenuddin is a prodigiously talented writer, capable of imagining the inner lives of Punjabi aristocrats and their servants with equal sympathy, precision and power."
- THE DAILY BEAST
"An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience."
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Astonishing...reveals a writer who seems to combine the the intimate rural rootedness and gentle humour of RK Narayan with the literary sophistication and stylishness of Jhumpa Lahiri. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is quite unlike anything recently published on the Indian side of the border, and throws the gauntlet down to a new generation of Indian writers. For the first time in this part of Asia, there is serious competition out there."
- FINANCIAL TIMES
Named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2009 by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and included amongst the Best Debut Fiction of 2009 on NPR.