Book Launch - The Wish Maker July 27, 2009

Book Launch - The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi. Amitav Ghosh will release the book. About the Book: The Wish Maker captures the moods and motifs of 1990s Pakistan unforgettably, in sparkling prose that marks the arrival of a major new literary talent. It is a story about two children and the family they grow up in, the people and the places they come to know and love. It is a story about Lahore, a city which changes over time; a story about Benazir Bhutto and the heady promise of democracy, and the recurring nightmare of military intervention; a story about Bollywood movie stars and American TV shows and the different kinds of forbidden love they inspire. It is also about wish-making and the validity of desire, of wanting more and better things all the time, in today's fractured world.Zaki Shirazi returns to Lahore to celebrate the wedding of his cousin and childhood companion Samar Api. Home is not what it used to be; Musharraf is in power, there has been a boom, and Lahore seems to have seen 'too much too soon'. Z aki's estrangement, amidst the flurry of wedding preparations in the house he grew up in, takes him back to his past: his childhood as a fatherless boy growing up in a household of outspoken women, and his and Samar's intertwined journeys from youth to adulthood. As children, they often attended dangerous political protests with Zaki's journalist mother. Surrounded by the mysterious talk of adults, only Zaki seemed to share his older cousin's yearning for the perfect world. Inspired by American soaps and Bollywood films that they watched together, their world held the promise of all sorts of forbidden love. Then, when Zaki supports one of Samar's romantic schemes, the family suffers the disastrous consequences. But as his fate diverges from Samar's, he comes to understand the world around him better, and to cherish the bonds that survive the tugs of convention, time and history.The Wish Maker is a novel of flawless insight and sparkling prose that marks the arrival of a major talent. About the Author: Ali Sethi was born in Lahore in 1984 and grew up there. In 2002, he left to attend college in the United States and graduated in 2006. He has sincewritten reviews and articles for several publications, local and international, and has co-produced and narrated a documentary on student politics in Pakistan. Ali Sethi lived in New York City for a year and now lives in Lahore, where he is making music.

Official Website: http://www.buzzintown.com/?122287&ref=yupg&refcity=6