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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique and vitally important insight into a hidden world, August 14, 2005
This review is from: The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Ancient Pleasure District (Hardcover)
Unique, important and beautifully written. Louise Brown is clearly an expert in her field. Not only are we transported to life in Heera Mandi, the ancient brothel quarter of Lahore, but we are introduced to Maha, a middle-aged courtesan and her children, Nisha, Nena, and Ariba, who take to Brown immediately.
It seems at one moment we are heartbroken and devastated by the reality of these women's lives, and at another intrigued and in awe of their ability to have some happiness, however small.
Brown's flair for description, and wondrous sense of humour brings this Walled City and its activities to life, creating a invigorating and wonderful read.
It is amazing that one human-being can find the courage, bravery and determination needed to record Heera Mandi, a world un-known to western culture, and its inhabitants. This book should be read for its sheer importance, not only for Brown's exquisite novelist's touch.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Account of the life of the lowly in Pakistan, November 26, 2005
This review is from: The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Ancient Pleasure District (Hardcover)
This book had me captivated within its first 10 pages. Rarely have I come across a book that is so unforgiving in giving me the actual violence and filth that befalls one of the most pariah segment of a Pakistani society.
Most of the Pakistanis will not talk about the Heera Mandi. In one of the many complex and idiosyncratic treatments towards sex, the Pakistani society will waste no time in classifying them as lowest of the lows, yet will also use them to help their essentially messed up sexual lives. This book spares nothing in portraying the almost unbelievable living conditions that the "tawaifs" are facing on a daily basis. You will also get to see the poor as they struggle to live on a day to day basis. The treatment of city sweepers, who are generally relegated to be treated as almost untouchables, is an eye-opener. This is not Rohington Mistry's account of a low class Sub-Continent fiction; this is very real, and it happens every day in the Red Light District of Lahore.
I love this book. Louise Brown lived in wretched conditions to observe the life of Maha, a woman in her 30s who has retired in an industry where rookies are as young as 10 years old. Occasionally, you get to see the dilemma that Ms. Brown passes through; when a young 14 year old is shipped to Gulf to be a mistress for an old Arab, who has a thing of young virgins, the author wonders whether she should actively get involved in stopping that illegal and dangerous trade from taking place. Another interesting part is the social hierarchy that exists within the Heera Mandi prostitutes, where one is "Shareef" or respectful because she commands 10,000 Rupees per night, and not 200.
Above all, this book is an ode to the human spirit. Ms. Brown spent months with the women and eunuchs at the Heera Mandi, yet had nothing but praise for their hospitality and respect towards her. At the end, they are humans who had the misfortune to be born in that part of the society, and they are doing the best they know of; keeping their traditions alive, and surviving on a day to day basis.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good idea, but not enough here to sustain the reader, May 11, 2007
The Dancing Girls of Lahore has a fascinating premise: looking at the lives of dancing girls (prostitutes) in Pakistan. Technically forbidden under Sharia law to engage in sex, these women lead what can best be described as shadow lives -- physically, metaphorically and spiritually in the murky margins of a society in which women have strictly (read: narrowly) proscribed roles. There are some very interesting (and also heartbreaking) bits here -- anecdotes, throwaway lines, etc. But that's the problem, really. We never come to understand what it is exactly that drew the author, British writer Louise Brown, to spend four years (off and on) living amongst the prostitutes of Lahore. As a result, what could have been a really fascinating study of lives not lived becomes a bit of a rag-tag collection of daily anecdotes.
I had the strong feeling that this would have made a wonderful magazine piece for, say, The New Yorker. Something with heft and something that would have allowed for 5,000 or even 10,000 words. As a book, however, one begins to feel the lure of skimming as a way through because it all starts to sound the same. We are not engaged enough in the lives of the women profiled; there isn't enough real detail about them, nor is there any sense of genuine dialogue. Descriptions of urine-filled streets, rats in the house, cough syrup overdoses, etc., are not engaging enough over 250+ pages to keep at least this reader emotionally connected and committed.
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