This Is Where the Serpent Lives

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 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 show more 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

I am not sure how I came across the writer, Daniyal Mueenuddin, but it is fortunate for me that I did. I was intrigued with his background. Mueenuddin was born in the United States but spent his childhood in Pakistan. He had his higher education in the U.S. and now spends his time on his farm in Pakistan and in Oslo Norway. This is Where the Serpent Lives is his debut novel, having previously been known for hist short stories.

This is Where the Serpent Lives echoes the novel Rickshaw Boy (She Lao) in its opening and closing chapters. Chapters about a boy born to poverty but on the way out of that poverty with the help of his own charm, hard work and the help of wealthy people whom he serves, only to be brought down by hubris, greed and show more capitalism.

There are two separate boys in This is Where the Serpent Lives, linked across decades to a farm in Punjab. In between the reader meets other mostly Punjabi characters, rich, ultra-rich and those in abject poverty.

The book spans six decades, starting in the 1950s and ending sometime in the first quarter of this century. But this is not your average generational family drama. It is about the characters and the lives of people linked sometimes loosely to a farm in central Punjab. The reader is also taken to Lahore and to an estate at a “hill station” near Pir Panjal Range. The structure is not purely chronological although there are chronological parts .

What is remarkable about This is Where the Serpent Lives is that the reader is there with the author and his characters, a shadow following both their inner thoughts and their actions.

Highly recommended. show less

Like East of Eden or Gilead, This is Where the Serpent Lives is an extended family drama about family, class and wealth. Things that are so easy to give up, to scorn or lose, but almost impossible to gain. Saqib, Yazid and the rest make choices that crush each other's lives, but their lives are so small, so powerless that they never really see it. They only know the misery that life inflicts on them. They start off with dreams, and they end with nothing.