Since I sort book donations at the library and frequent bookstores I decided to start this challenge with countries that cross my path organically, we’ll see how far that gets me. Pakistan was the next country to have both a fiction and nonfiction book come through the book donations which makes it country number 4.
This is the first country that did exactly what I wanted this challenge to do. Listening to I Am Malala with my family on a road trip gave me the deeply religious northern part of the country and how Islamic radicals fought to take control. The Museum Detective gave me a glimpse of a more cosmopolitan Pakistan with the Karachi setting. Both gave a real sense of the country, even if they differed on what view they were offering.
Nonfiction
I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai, 2014, 230 pages
We listened to the version that was ‘rewritten for an audience her own age’. I chose it for the main reason that it would be short enough for a road trip, it’s only 5 hours. It was a good choice for us, but I don’t know how much was missing or changed from the original version.
Malala is an amazing person. Confident, brave, dedicated. He activism for the education of girls at such a young age is amazing. Her parents are to be commended. Learning more about how the Taliban came to have such a prominent role in her region was enlightening. I hadn’t known much about her life before she was shot and this book does a really good job of showing what happened before that made her a target of the terrorist organiztion.
It felt a bit repetitive at times, but still worth reading 100%. The audio included her speech in front of the UN at the end and I liked hearing her voice and her passion for education.
Fiction
The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips, 2025, 326 pages
The police find a sarcophagus on a drug bust and Dr. Gul Delani is called in the middle of the night. She works for the museum and is an expert on mummies. We learn of the old Persian Empire, the history of mummies, the customs and social structure of Karachi, as well as the role of women. Was the sarcophagus real? Would there be danger for her if it was?
This was a nice flip side to the Malala coin. Women in Karachi were also second place citizens, but women could rise above, especially if your family had money. I really liked this one and would gladly read another book about Gul.
The closest I’ve come to reading anything about Pakistan before this was American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar – Stacy’s Books about a boy whose parents came from Pakistan and a Pakistani friend who came to stay with them.
My goal is to read a fiction and nonfiction book set in and written by someone who was born in that country. As recommendations trickled in I realized that it’s the ‘born in that country’ part that is going to make some books not work. I’m excluding the immigrant experience. It wasn’t my intent, I just didn’t really think it through in those terms. I’m not going to change the rules at this point. Maybe I’ll do a spin off challenge for that.
Countries completed…
Stacy's Books 