The Wish Maker

Publishers Weekly

The turbulence of contemporary Pakistani politics is refracted through the intimate prism of a fractious extended family in this mature debut, written when the author was 23. Twenty-year-old Zaki Shirazi, his military father dead before he was born, is raised with his rebellious female cousin Samar Api in a Lahore household dominated by his liberal mother, Zakia, editor of a crusading women's magazine, and his strong-willed, culturally conservative grandmother, Daadi. The nimble two-track narrative shifts between post-9/11, when Zaki returns from college in Massachusetts for Samar's wedding, and his childhood in the early 1990s, around the time then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was deposed, an act that polarized the country. The political background frames Sethi's complex narrative, but the primary focus is on the family's relatively privileged-and often as argumentative as it is loving-household, providing Western readers with an insider's atmospheric take on a culture and a country much in the news these days. (June)

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New York Times Book Review

With this first-rate novel, Sethi joins an ever-expanding roster of gifted young Pakistani writers who, after graduating from Western universities, have returned home with an urgent need to explain their misunderstood country to a global audience.

Mike Peed

With this first-rate novel, Sethi joins an ever-expanding roster of gifted young Pakistani writers who, after graduating from Western universities, have returned home with an urgent need to explain their misunderstood country to a global audience…Though distinctly restrained, Sethi's prose evokes the comic mislocutions of Jonathan Safran Foer and the vertiginous mania of Zadie Smith.
—The New York Times

Library Journal

Change vs. stasis is one of several themes in this debut by political essayist Sethi. Zaki Shirazi comes home to Pakistan from his New England college to attend cousin Samar Api's wedding, observing the superficial, Western-influenced changes in Lahore yet realizing that, underneath the surface, life is much the same. Born months after his father's death in the Pakistani air force, Zaki is raised by and among strong women: his mother, Zakia, editor of a feminist journal; Daadi, his conservative paternal grandmother; Naseem, the nurturing servant of unquestioned loyalty; and Samar, a confusing blend of cousin, sister, and friend. Through the prism of Pakistan's tumultuous struggle toward democracy, Sethi examines three generations of lives informed by an inconstant cultural climate. The author deftly employs the eyes of a journalist to exquisitely detail daily life in Lahore but could have been encouraged to edit extraneous material that often prevents the narrative from flowing. Still, the popularity of recent novels out of Pakistan, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist and A Case of Exploding Mangoes, will warrant interest. [See Prepub Alert, LJ2/1/09.]
—Sally Bissell

Kirkus Reviews

A dysfunctional family mirrors a dysfunctional nation in Sethi's unfocused debut. The novel ends where it begins, with Zaki Shirazi arriving in Lahore, Pakistan, for the wedding of his cousin Samar Api some years after 9/11. Now a college student in Massachusetts, Zaki grew up with Samar, who was his closest childhood companion. They lived in his grandmother's house in Lahore. Daadi, a forceful old woman, agreed with her younger sister Chhoti, Samar's mother, that the little girl was better off in the city than in the repressive, conservative village of Chhoti's old-fashioned husband. As for Zaki, "I had been given to Daadi as compensation for the death of her son," he tells us. His father, a Pakistani air force pilot, died in a flying accident before his birth, and his mother is a devoted journalist but a negligent parent. We seem to be headed for a coming-of-age story about Zaki, or perhaps Samar, but their narratives have many gaps, and a big chunk of the novel concerns Zaki's mother, who also lives on sufferance in Daadi's house. Zakia-her husband wanted the boy named after her-is the most interesting character. A progressive, cutting-edge reporter focusing on the subjugation of women (the novel's half-buried theme), she's a supporter of Benazir Bhutto but becomes disillusioned when Bhutto achieves power. Sethi's unenlightening references to the volatile world of Pakistan's politics-hardly more sophisticated than, "today democracy, tomorrow martial law"-are jarringly juxtaposed with the soap-opera story of a teenage confidante who steals Samar's boyfriend. Zaki performs acts of vandalism to get his mother's attention; Samar is punished for her alleged loose living and returned to herfather's feudal homeland. But Sethi muffles the drama inherent in his characters' troubled lives: Samar's exile is reported after the fact, and when Zaki is involved in the school fight of his life, the circumstances are as murky as the author's prose. Commendably ambitious, but this young Pakistani author has bitten off more than he can chew.