Daniyal Mueenuddin

This collection of stories is insightful and by turns luminous and bleak. Mueenuddin takes the stories of a wide range of people, from poor servants to the landed rich, to form a cross section of Pakistani society, the common thread being their relationship to an old aristocratic land-owner and his family. It is full of poetic detail and Mueenuddin's characters are complex, fully realised and sympathetic, but the overall picture is of a divided society in which very few stories have happy show more endings. Considering the setting, the stories feel very secular, with very few overtly religious elements - it is much more about families, money, power and influence. I suspect that many of these stories would stand up well to multiple readings show less

A collection of loosely linked short stories set in more-or-less present day Pakistan. Highly illustrative of life in the decaying feudal system as younger members of well-placed families feel the pull of the wider world, and begin to reject the rigid social and familial structures of past generations. I found the interpersonal relationships very unsettling in most of these stories...so little real communication, or true affection, and despite many references to the contrary in reviews and show more blurbs, no lightness or humor that I could detect. I feel I learned quite a lot about this society, without coming to understand it very well. Some of this is down to my lack of enthusiasm for short fiction in general---I just get acquainted with characters and their situations when I have to leave them behind. And endings are so often abrupt, or ambiguous. Still, the writing here is outstanding, even brilliant at times. And if you have a better relationship with the short form than I do, by all means add this collection to your list. show less

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunning first novel from universally acclaimed Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose debut short story collection won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and show more social station.

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Livespaints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan, and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. From Afra, who rose from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster; to Saqib, an errand boy who is eventually trusted to lead his boss’s new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. Saqib’s boss, the wealthy landowner Hisham, reminisces about meeting his wife while she was dating his brother, while Gazala, a young teacher, falls for Saqib and his bold promises for their future before learning about his plans to skim money from the farm’s profits.

In matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country.

Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving, Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Soapy story about being born into class, being raised crass, and oppressing the mass...es. I was ready for some piercing social commentary on Pakistan's elites, the warping effect of money allied to godlike privilege on the privileged and on their victims, the distortion of justice that is misogyny...all of these I got. I got them slowly at first, in languorous scenes that linger on details; as the narrative shifts time frames and picks up speed, though not by much, each time.

It is probably that last the lopped off a star. I found I was a little too long in 1955 with Bayasid, only for him to cede the stage completely. It makes narrative sense, it's not poorly handled, I understood *why* it was happening and even agreed with the decision. It happens again when Rustom hands over to Hisham and Nessim on their way to Dartmouth...it's clearly intended to serve a purpose, though I'm not in full agreement with the purpose it's serving being a good one.

I'm not, I promise you, trying to make this sound like a bad read. I found it very interesting to live with these characters. I wasn't as impelled to read more as is necessary for me to offer that fifth star. I'd call this a promising first novel by a writer with serious short-story chops.

Maybe even a short-story cycle that got smooshed into a novel.... show less

The stories in this collection layer to form a picture of Pakistan's social structure. The local society and economy is centered in a few landowners, who often live in one of Pakistan's larger cities like Lahore or Islamabad and have managers who oversee their country estates. In most of the stories, the main characters are trying to improve their living conditions by securing positions within a landowner's household as employees, servants, or, in the case of some of the women, as show more mistresses.

Most of the stories have a tone of hopelessness or resignation. Security is tenuous, dependent on the health and financial stability of the landowner/employer. Most of the protagonists must decide whether to cast their lot with another person; once the choice is made, they rise or fall with that person's fortune. Even the wealthy characters have limited choices since their responsibilities are defined by society.

“About a Burning Girl” stands out from the rest of the stories with its first-person narrator and its humorous tone. This was the most enjoyable story to read. The one that may haunt me longest is “A Spoiled Man”, in which the thoughtless kindnesses of an American woman set in motion a cruel chain of events. There's not a weak story in the collection. Highly recommended. show less