The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature follows his debut Home Boy with“an unforgettable romp across love, life, and everything else” (Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life).
Abdullah, bachelor and scion of a once prominent family, awakes on the morning of his seventieth birthday and considers launching himself over the balcony. Having spent years attempting to compile a “mythopoetic legacy” of his beloved Karachi, the cosmopolitan heart of Pakistan, Abdullah has lost his zeal. A surprise invitation for a night out from his old friend Felix Pinto snaps Abdullah out of his funk and saddles him with a ward—Pinto’s adolescent grandson Bosco. As Abdullah plays mentor to Bosco, he also attracts the romantic attentions of Jugnu, an enigmatic siren with links to the mob. All the while Abdullah’s brothers’ plot to evict him from the family estate. Now he must to try to save his home—or face losing his last connection to his familial past.
Anarchic, erudite, and rollicking, with a septuagenarian protagonist like no other, The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack is a joyride of a story set against a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of the world’s most vibrant cities.
“H.M. Naqvi’s remarkable Cossack is the Pakistani Falstaff, the Tristram Shandy of ‘Currachee,’ spinning yarns inside yarns, allusive, affirming, and grandly comic.”—Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
“Wild, wise, and tender . . . Every page in this book is a playground, and each sentence an absolute thrill and joy to read.”—Patricia Engel, author of The Veins of the Ocean
“Completely original in form and sensibility.”—Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Naqvi's second novel (after Homeboy) is an uproariously funny, poignant family saga told by a glib septuagenarian contemplating life in his beloved city of Karachi. Once manager of his father's Hotel Olympus, the philosophical Abdullah, nicknamed "Cossack" because he once outdrank a contingent of visiting Russians, now lives, overweight and diabetic, in the upstairs quarters of a crumbling family house shared with his brother Babu's family. Beloved uncle of the "Childoos" downstairs, and fancying himself a phenomenologist, Abdullah is nevertheless seen by the majority of his relatives as profligate and irresponsible. Things go treacherously haywire after he's rescued from thugs in the street by a mysterious lady named Jugnu, and his old friend, a jazz musician dubbed "the Caliph of Cool," asks him to act as guardian for his grandson Bosco. It so happens that both Jugnu and Bosco's family are in danger from the Karachi mob. As threats mount, including from Abdullah's own family, who are pressuring him to give up the title deed to the house so they can sell it, the nostalgic, courageous Abdullah comes up with a scheme to save everyone. Touching on the metaphysical, the moral, and the absurd, this bawdy epic is a fresh-voiced testament to place, family, and the importance of loyalty.)
