Well, its old news that the government tried to block the launch of Ayesha Siddiqa’s book ‘Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy
First, here are some details about Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha.
Her expertise : South Asia, military expenditure, arms control, arms procurement.
Her Brief Bio:
She did her doctorate from King’s College, London in 1996 and has worked on issues varying from military expenditure, defence decision-making, nuclear deterrence, arms procurement, arms production to civil-military relations in South Asia. She is also a Ford Fellow and more recently Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.
Continue reading ‘A full General is worth Rs 500 million+’
“Beautiful and charismatic, the daughter of one of Pakistan’s most popular leaders — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged by General Zia in 1979 — Benazir Bhutto is not only the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, she achieved a status approaching that of a royal princess, only to be stripped of her power in another example of the bitter political in-fighting that has riven her country. From her upbringing in one of Pakistan’s richest families, the shock of the contrast of her Harvard and Oxford education, and subsequent politicisation and arrest after her father’s death, Bhutto’s life has been full of drama.” – Simon & Schuster, Publishers of Daughter of the East (& In the Line of Fire).
Mohsin Hamid has produced a dull novel that is bereft of any creativity or literary value. I would like to be fair to him and his labour but there is not much to celebrate in his latest novel Reluctant Fundamentalist. Reading, like any other important activity, is sacred and I take it very seriously. Firstly, I think the title of Mr. Hamid’s novel tells you all without even reading 170 pages of it. So the publishers have done an abominable job with respect to naming the novel because it leaves little or even nothing for imagination. Readers who like good literature will see through this cheap technique. Even before flipping a page of this novel one is thinking about the eventual fate of the reluctant fundamentalist. 
