The Pakistani Bride: A Novel

By Bapsi Sidhwa

As a youth, Qasim leaves his tribal village in the remote Himalayas for the plains. Caught up in the strife surrounding the creation of Pakistan, he takes an orphaned girl for his daughter and brings her to the bustling, decadent city of Lahore. Amid the pungent bazaars and crowded streets, Qasim makes his fortune and a home for the two of them. As the years pass, Qasim grows nostalgic about his life in the mountains while his hopelessly romantic teenage daughter, Zaitoon, imagines Qasim's homeland as a region of tall, kindly men who roam the Himalayas like gods. Impulsively, Qasim promises his daughter in marriage to a tribesman, but Zaitoon's fantasy soon becomes a grim reality of unquestioning obedience and unending labor. Bapsi Sidhwa’s acclaimed first novel is a robust, richly plotted story of colliding worlds straddled by a spirited girl for whom escape may not be an option.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Release date: Nov 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781571319043

Bapsi Sidhwa

Born in Karachi and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa has been widely celebrated as the finest novelist produced by her country. Sidhwa is the author of five novels: The Pakistani Bride, Crow Eaters, An American Brat, Cracking India (which was made into the award-winning film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta in 1999, and was named by Modern Library one of the best books in English published since 1950), and, most recently, Water (which was based on Deepa Mehta’s screenplay for the film of the same name). Her work has been published in ten countries and has been translated into several languages. Among her many honors, Sidhwa has received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the arts. She also served, at Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s request, on an Advisory Committee on Women’s Development in Pakistan. Sidhwa now resides in Houston.

Reviews for The Pakistani Bride

[mariamreza · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Loses a bit of momentum and originality from the middle, but remains witty throughout. A good book but not Bapsi Sidhwa's best.