The 13th House - Hardcover

If Jonathan Swift were alive today and had the bad luck to live in one of the most poverty-plagued and politically turbulent countries--Pakistan--he might have written this mordantly surrealistic novel. Sahid, a trod-upon victim of his wife, his employers, the government and society in general, believes he has found the fulfillment of his life's dream when he rents a house at what he thinks is a bargain price. But there's an evil power about the place, or so everybody says; and everybody seems to be right. Zahid's close friend is assassinated by the police; his emotionally disturbed son becomes more deranged; and his wife is seduced by a religious guru. Finally another of Zahid's friends is killed and Zahid is jailed for the murder. The joke in the novel's title, if joke is the right word, is its insinuation that supernatural bad luck caused all these disasters. In fact, the author makes clear, man's inhumanity to man was responsible.Zameenzad, a Pakistani by birth, writes beautiful English prose. This book won Britain's 1987 David Highham Award for Best First Novel.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Having lost two sons, the timid Zahid and his lovely wife Jamilla struggle to preserve their surviving children from harm amidst the political and religious turmoil of contemporary Pakistan. The house they inhabit--said to be haunted--comes alive in their hallucinations, reflecting the tensions in their relationship with Shah Baba, a holy man Zahid contacts to relieve the terrors of his tiny, retarded son. At first the narrator seems an omniscient and anonymous observer, weaving trenchant social criticism into his account of the house and the travail of its inhabitants. It soon turns out, however, that he is an intimate of the family, that his own story is as intriguing as theirs, and that the house will be the crucible of the surprising destiny of them all. A compelling first novel.
- L.M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.