The Pakistani Bride

by Bapsi Sidhwa

Book Overview

A Pakistani teenager is trapped by tradition in this tale by "Pakistan's finest English-language novelist" (New York Times).

Wild, austere, and magnificently beautiful, the territories of northern Pakistan are a forbidding place, particularly for women. Traveling alone from the isolated mountain village where he was born, Qasim, a tribal man, takes Zaitoon, an orphaned girl, for his daughter and brings her to the glittering...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571310630
• ISBN13: 9781571310637
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great fiction with just enough amount of history!

Bapsi Sidhwa is an extraordinary writer. She seems to capture the essence of culture and tradition within Pakistan. The characters are well formed and the author follows this journey quite well with a mesh of "why" for the unanswered cultural questions. This is a part of the world that evokes great ambivalence for me the reader, because I want to criticize the abuse of women and can't seem to understand why they don't run away. Sidhwa anticipates this feeling and tries to resolve it in her novel.

A GOOD READ

I found this book slow to start, but it picked up nicely after. Considering it was the author's first book, it was quite good. I wasn't fond of the ending, but, that is personal preferance. I liked it better as I went along.

4.5 star read

A slow starter, but an excellent read. The main characters are a man, Qasim, who marries when he is 10 years old and a child, Zaitoon, who loses her parents when she is 5. Qasim becomes Zaitoon's father and we watch them become older in a newly-formed Pakistan. Zaitoon turns 16 and a marriage is arranged for her. It's a beautiful story that touches upon certain aspects of India that I've found are glossed over in other Indian novels: the underground and bad arranged marriages.

Worthy but Definitely not Dull

Through her characters in The Bride, Bapsi Sidhwa introduces and combines vastly different worlds seamlessly. The novel is infused with pathos through understated humour but overwhelming humanity. The result is that rarest of commodities, "a good read".

Excellent portrayal of various cultures within Pakistan

I read this book while living in Pakistan. As an american woman married to a Pakistani man and living in Islamabad's middle class, I could readily identify with many characters in this book. Most books written about this culture are usually judgemental or are from a western viewpoint and therefore erroneous.The Bride begins at the time of The Partition, when India and Pakistan became two separate, independent countries following centuries of British rule. Because of unexpected events, an older unmarried Pathan man becomes the foster father of a Punjabi infant girl. He settles with the infant girl in Lahore (Punjab). As he gets older he fondly remembers his childhood in the NWFP. He sees the girl getting older and arranges a marriage for her with a Pathan family in NWFP. Against her will, she is married to a man she has never met and moves to a land she has never seen. She desperately wants to return to her kind foster father and escape the harsh and brutal living of the NWFP. You will have to read this excellent book to find out how this story unfolds.Punjabi and Pathan cultures are very disparate. The Punjab is a well-travelled, flat terrain farming province. The NWFP is mountainous and closed off to the outside world. The punjabi society is one of many cultures, ideas, religions and people. The NWFP society tends to be much more clannish, traditional, not accepting of change. Ms. Sidhwa does an excellent job of portraying both cultures and how they impact the life of this young girl. The conclusion of the novel is a realistic scenario, one that a young woman in today's Pakistan would face if in the same situation. Additionally, Ms. Sidhwa's portrayal of a young american woman is deadly accurate, and, in my opinion, a scathing commentary on the ignorance, self-centeredness and ethnocentrism of the first-world.