Songs of Blood and Sword
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Discover this lyrical, sweeping and powerful book on the Bhutto family, an extraordinary, Kennedy-esque dynasty that is central to the story of modern Pakistan.
In September 1996, a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father Murtaza was murdered, along with six of his associates. In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima's aunt, and the woman she had publically accused of ordering her father's murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best known political dynasties.
Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of a family of rich feudal landlords - the proud descendents of a warrior caste - who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan. The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father's murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country's volatile political establishment. It is the history of a nation from Partition through the struggle with India over Kashmir, the Cold War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan up to the post 9/11 'War on Terror'.
It is also a book about a daughter's love for her father and her search to uncover, and to understand, the truth of his life and death. It is a book about a family and nation riven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, written by one who has lived it, in the heart of the storm.
Songs of Blood and Sword is a book of international significance by a young woman who has already established herself as a brave and passionate campaigner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Bhuttos very rarely, even then, died natural deaths," Bhutto writes, speaking of her great-great-grandfather. And so it seems in this family history lived on a stage of national and international intrigue. A grandfather, Zulifar Ali Bhutto, executed; an uncle, Shanawaz Bhutto, murdered; a father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, assassinated; and an aunt, Benazir Bhutto, assassinated; all inhabit this utterly fascinating blend of intimate but diligently researched family memoir and complex political history. The four decades from Fatima's grandfather's service as foreign minister in the 1960s to her aunt's assassination in 2007 encompass most of the history of Pakistan. Fatima covers its alliances, its wars, its coups, its treaties, its corruption, its inefficiency, its repression. The family's public political triumphs and tragedies are set within their private pleasures and painful quarrels a life of power and a life in exile, falling in love and being imprisoned, the ease of wealth for happy childhoods and the anguish of adult separation so severe that Fatima holds her aunt Benazir culpable in her father's assassination. Partisan and controversial as aspects of it are, Fatima Bhutto's book is a lucid and engaging account of a nation and a family.
