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    Pakistani Author Comes Under Fire For Satirical Novel After Urdu Edition Is Published

    Copies of a new Urdu edition of Mohammed Hanif's 2008 novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, were seized Monday. Rights groups say it's another sign that freedom of expression is threatened in Pakistan.
    by Diaa Hadid Jan 10, 2020 4 minutes
    Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif says copies of the Urdu translation of his irreverent novel, <em>A Case of Exploding Mangoes</em>, were seized from his publisher's office this week. The book was published in English in 2008 to wide international acclaim and was translated into Urdu in September.

    Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif used to quip that the reason why his country's intelligence officials hadn't harassed him for lampooning a military dictator was because it could take them years to get the joke.

    Now that A Case of Exploding Mangoes -- the award-winning satirical novel he wrote more than a decade ago — has been translated from English into Urdu, things have changed.

    On Monday, men claiming to be from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency raided the Maktaba-e-Danyal publishing house in Karachi, confiscating about 250 copies and demanding to know which bookshops were selling the novel, according to Hanif and the book's

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