My mistake, you are absolutely right and I don’t know what I was thinking. I just rattled off the first three modern Urdu authors I could think of, and completely forgot that Dalrymple was only talking about Pakistan. Still, despite my embarrassment, I hope the point still stands.

Moreover, there is some debate, Dalrymple has an incredibly simplistic view of how easily the Congress managed to kill of the feudal class within India; when if you actually look at the literature and specialists on the subject, much of this class managed to evade a significant part of the reforms for quite a while and it was the declining returns to agriculture, combined with the political rise of the peasantry and OBC class that comprised them as well as , and this is key, the technological and production changes wrought by the Green Revolution that really reduced the standings of this class – many of whom reinvented themselves by moving into politics, the bureacracy and urban professions/industry – ironically this is a process captured very well in much of Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’. There was also at least from the late 1960s onwards, real pressure from below, through peasant mobilisation and the Left parties for land reform on behalf of the smaller peasants and landless in a fashion that was absent in Pakistan.

But this is a very informative and enjoyable article!

And one more thing about Dalrymple’s review that made me absolutely fuming with anger (frankly, if I ever meet him I’ll say it to his face). How dare he say that “until a few years ago” Pakistani literature in BOTH Urdu and English was a “desert”? There have been hundreds of extraordinary writers in Urdu, from Intizar Husain to Mohammed Salim-ur-Rahman to Syed Muhammad Ashraf to many more, in the last few decades of the 20th century into today. If Dalrymple is trying to promote South Asian literature to the world, insulting with one stroke of a pen an entire literary culture that deserves all the help and support it can get is no way to go about it.

For those whose Urdu isn’t up to the task, one can go to this site (http://gadyakosh.org/gk/index.php?title=खोल_दो_/_सआदत_हसन_मंटो) to read the story in Hindi.

I enjoyed thinking about the translation of “khol do”. Maybe the doctor could point to curtains and say “spread ‘em” but that would not work as a title, as it would be full of connotations. “Khol do” sounds more like a request, as in “go ahead and open”. “Kholo” would be an order, but probably not a very catchy title.

In “spoiled man” the only thing remaining from Rezak’s life is an expensive gravestone he saved up for. I could have sworn that in my 4th grade Urdu reader there was a famous short story with the same plot line (with an office worker, rather than a farm worker).

I have not read any less than positive reviews of the book. I did read an essay mocking DM’s actual labor practices on the land. I dont remember where.

My critique of the upper class stories may be based on my own shallow memory. Why where Lily and Murad attracted to each other as marriage partners? I dont remember. Maybe DM never explained. I dont remember anything about the mom in Europe besides the facts that she was high-end and bossy.

To the issue of DM as “authentic” or garnering good press, I think what is notable (as is the case with Mohsin Hamid) that he immediately was anointed to “represent” Pakistan. It is that quality of secondary analysis that bugs me more than anything else. DM may very well have the Great Pakistani-American Zamindari Novel in him or many other Chekovian cum Mantoesque short stories but he should never be given the burden of being the sole (literary) representative. I am sure he doesn’t want the mantel either, though I don’t see him actively pulling a Jonathan Franzen over it (Oprah!). When WD anoints DM, or PEN does, it categorizes his fiction as the only mirror possible to approach a nation which is ridiculously under-served in cultural or literary aspects in Anglo-American press. Maybe there aren’t any more deserving authors but at the very least attuned critics can make this exact point and instead of uncritically fawning over DM, give his work the attention it deserves. I bet he will appreciate it more, even. Hence the awesomeness of your essay.

I have to agree with you (and disagree with Jawad) about preferring the stories about the upper class characters. I thought, in particular, that the mother in “Our Lady of Paris” was one of the more keenly drawn in the book. The upper class characters bore the mark of Waugh, with touches of Fitzgerald…I was tempted to go into more detail about those comparisons as well, but the article was already ballooning. I did however, have that same weird feeling about “Lily” that Jawad did– especially after reading interviews with the author, where he describes his lifestyle on the farm, and how he never socializes, gets up and writes every morning, exercises extreme discipline, etc.

Oh and thank you for the Punjabi muhavras. I think such sayings always have many variants, with the salient detail being Sepoy’s observation that none of them speak of killing.

Qalandar: As always, many salient observations. I would like to add to your point that no reviewers have brought up the zamindari aspect of DM’s work, and observe that in my searches, I could find no reviews that were negative or even faintly critical of the book. It was this that prompted me to go on at much greater length than I had intended, because it seemed like no conversations had been started about these issues. I am particularly surprised that no one seems to have broached the topic of his depiction of women in print, although perhaps I have missed something.

One reason why I zeroed in on WD’s review was because I wondered if it was serving as a model for other reviewers. WD has somehow gotten himself into the position of being the guy who gets to say if South Asian writing is authentic or not. This is troublesome partly because the authenticity debate is loathesome, but also because, um, this is a guy who is aggressively laying claim to some kind of authentic Indianness himself. In this vein, check out this article in the Times if you haven’t already, in which WD talks about his zamindari rental. The best part comes at the end, with a helpful primer for setting up house in India. Tips include:

- To buy property in India, you must have lived in the country for more than 182 days in the previous financial year on a nontourist visa. Don’t despair if you don’t qualify: you can register a company in India and buy the property through that.

- No such restrictions apply to nonresident Indians (NRIs) or people of Indian origin (PIOs). Some states, including Himachal Pradesh, in northern India, have imposed additional restrictions, although many of these are being eased. One way round all this is to take a lease of between 10 and 20 years.

Isn’t that how the East India Company did it?