The Wish Maker Grows Up in Pakistan, Lyrically
Ali Sethi will be reading from his debut novel, The Wish Maker, at 8 p.m., on Thursday, June 18, at Elliott Bay Book Company.
We'll preface this review by saying that we absolutely loved Ali Sethi's debut novel The Wish Maker. The fact that he is only 24 years old and could produce such a well-written, excellent debut novel is just outstanding. It reminds of us other young, all-time favorites, such as Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, who started writing the novel at 26, or say, Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein at a mere nineteen (granted she wrote it at Lord Byron's house, where you'd expect something magical to happen).
Regardless, it's hard not to be impressed by Sethi's smooth and poetic storytelling. The fact that he is a recent Harvard graduate may have helped, or possibly it was from working with well-known writers such as Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, and critic James Woods while at Harvard, or maybe that he grew up in a house of prominent progressive journalists. We assume that all of these attributes combined helped Sethi find his voice as a writer, but more so that he has had that special knack all along, considering you can only learn so much when it comes to writing, before you just have to do.
While reading The Wish Maker, we kept thinking about the narrator's voice, and how lyrical the storytelling always sounded. When describing the book to friends, we just kept saying, "It has that quality, that we just can't put our finger on." And still, after thinking long and hard about exactly what that quality is, we have a hard time of describing it, other than that it is romantic. We will say that it reminds us of how we felt while reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon, a couple years back; that same lyricalness to it, as if it were meant for a song rather than a novel. Sethi's descriptions are everything but cliché, and rather fresh and inventive.
The novel, set mainly in Lahore, Pakistan, where Sethi grew up, can be seen as both a coming-of-age story, and a detailed family saga, since it spans over three decades. Main character, Zacki (pronounced as Zucky) Shirazi, is "a fatherless boy growing up in a family of outspoken women in contemporary Pakistan." Zacki and his slightly-older female cousin, Samar Api, are raised as if they were siblings, and together they engage in many adventures including dangerous protests, secret friendships, dancing to and memorizing Bollywood movies, and watching American television, including The Wonder Years, which is Zacki's favorite.
But once they become teenagers, Samar is sent to live with her strict parents (she and Zacki were living with Zacki's mother and strong-willed grandmother), due to her unconventional behavior (which in America would fly, but in Pakistan, no way). Zacki is forced to discover the world for himself, make his own friends, and come to terms with himself as a boy becoming an adult in one of the most turbulent regions of the world.
With the novel set in the 1990s, Pakistan is going through many changes, economically and politically. Zacki's mother is an unconventional feminist and liberal journalist for the fictional magazine Women's Journal, who raises him on the romantic optimism of democracy, that of the late Benazir Bhutto's, which doesn't bring everything they hoped for. It was also during the time that Pakistan declared their nuclear capability, and fundamentalist seminaries were on the rise in the poorer parts of the country.
In a nutshell, Pakistan was facing times of political and social change, and it meant different things to everyone. The Wish Maker touches on everything that was happening, but only vaguely. And by vaguely, we mean that as a reader you have a full understanding of what was going on given the time, but that Sethi obviously regarded his readers to be smart enough where he wouldn't have to spell everything out. A perfect example is of the way he describes 9/11 and seeing it on the news that day:
Daadi and my mother were sitting before the TV. An American newsreader was frowning into her microphone, her shoulders sagging, her hair sitting in a dusty breeze. Behind her was a thick cloud of smoke. And then came the image of two tall buildings, sparkling in daylight until they were hit, one after the other, by apparently blind airplanes.
This is the only image given of 9/11, where if you happened to skim the page, you would miss it completely. This is what we mean by vague, and that Sethi assumes you know exactly what he is speaking of, and can spend more time giving detail to the character's reactions or emotions, instead of a history lesson.
Novelist Ali Sethi
What does the title of the book--The Wish Maker--mean?
The wish maker is someone who makes a wish (that would be everyone in the world) but also someone who grants a wish, or enables it in some way. Zaki, our narrator, by allowing the people around him to lead their lives in their own ways, at their own odd paces, is ultimately granting them the right to make their own wishes come true.
What is the biggest misconception that Americans have about Pakistan?
That it's a Middle Eastern country.
There has recently been a wave of notable novels from Pakistan writers, including not only yours but books by Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Nadeem Aslam, Kamila Shamsie, and Daniyal Mueenuddin, among others. What do you think accounts for this burst of creativity and prominence?
There's been a lot of turbulence in Pakistan recently. And I think that turbulence has forced Pakistanis to look at themselves. So we have more novels from Pakistan, but also more musicians, more artists, more journalists, more scholars, more clerics.
Americans have a greater interest in Pakistan today than ever before because of its central role in the war against terrorism. Who is gaining the upper hand there--the people who are sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or those who are more oriented toward the West? And do you fear that your country is sinking into a period of violence and chaos? How has the recent attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team and subsequent global media focus affected daily life in Lahore and the general psyche of its residents?
I think by and large people in Pakistan are not oriented toward the West. But that doesn't mean they are oriented toward the Taliban instead. People may use Western technology and prefer to obtain Western degrees whenever they can, and they may even watch American TV and listen to American songs, but the social infrastructure of Pakistan is still the one that was set up by the military (with Saudi and American funding) in the 1980s, encouraging a socially conservative Muslim identity. We have more outlets now for expression (more radio and TV channels, for example) but the beliefs people have are still the ones they were given all those years ago. I do fear for my country, but I hope that we can reform the laws and the schools and universities so that people have greater exposure to alternative beliefs.
What would you most like Americans to know about Pakistan?
It's a country of 170 million people, as geographically diverse as your own, with mountains and deserts and lush valleys and mighty rivers. Its oldest monuments are as old as human history.
