Customer Reviews

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It is impossible to say enough about these subtle, deep, painful stories which remind me of Chekhov. In all the tales, revolving somehow around a very rich Pakistani landowner and his family, the poet Burn's line "man's inhumanity to man" kept echoing in my mind. I was enthralled by the unique vision and skill of the writer and at the same time truly depressed by the stories. The rich see nothing outside themselves but for brief moments; they have little joy and the poor are less than chattel to them. The poor or those fallen from prosperity cluster about them, hanging on to their feet for dear life, and inevitably falling away. If love begins to blossom in these stories, it will fail by one partner's flawed nature or parents' manipulative intervention. If any character has a sweet or generous nature, he or she is totally extinguished. Women fare the worse, being kept as mistresses until the man dies and then losing everything.

What a picture it paints of a feudal society though throughout the classes! Nawabdin the electrician can fix any machine with mango sap and makeshift wiring until it soon breaks again; he married, early in his life, "a sweet woman of unsurpassed fertility" who gave him twelve daughters for whom he must find dowries by turning his hand to dozens of little businesses until a thief in even more desperate condition tries to kill him for his motorcycle. Lily, a woman in her 30s who is weary of a life of loose sex and wild parties, vows to change into a model farmer's wife when she marries the decent son of a rich landowner. She discovers once married that "I'm not the type to be dutiful. I'm messy and willful and self-destructive." (The paragraph which ends this story is so brilliant I read it three times.) And the last story with the character I loved the best, "a small, bowlegged man with a lopsided face," a dirt-poor peasant so devoted to the garden which a rich woman hires him to tend that he lovingly buys grape vines with his own money. For these characters and many more, the author sings a sonorous lament with his prose.

A very sad book, but wonderfully written, just wonderfully.

This terrific book is made up of short stories that are linked, and you see some of the same characters at different points in time and place. It's not that easy to do, but Mueensuddin pulls it off perfectly, and you get to know each character in almost a Rashamon way - through their own eyes and through those of others. If you think that you really dislike or favor someone, just wait. You may think differently later on.

These stories have locations in common too, and the majority of the book takes place near Lahore, on the farmlands of a wealthy Pakistani family. We are shown what life is like for the poor, and for the rich. We become acquainted with landowners, and the workers and servants, and how bad luck or one bad decision can result in catastrophe. Success and happiness in life often depends on the circumstances of one's birth, and the reader gets a lesson about Pakistani culture, and its harshness, its dependence on knowing the right people, and its fatalism. And throw luck into the mix. And because the stories take place at different times, we see how modernization has affected Pakistan - and how some things remain the same.

If you were a fan of A Fine Balance (one of my favorite books), or The God of Small Things, I can *guarantee* that you will love this book. Like those great novels, this one can be both heartbreaking and funny, and many times you will be smiling at some amusing passage only to be devastated by the next.

One other thing to add - I am not, in general, a big fan of short stories. If you feel this way too, do not be put off by the fact this is a book of stories. Both because the book is so well-written, and because the stories share commonality of characters and place, it reads like a novel.

So, highly, highly recommended. This is going down as one of my top reads of the year. It's that good. (And you'll be hooked from page one - another big plus.)

Mueenuddin weaves a series of short stories around a wealthy Pakistani land-owning family of the old order, and the retainers, servants and heirs whose lives are centered around them. The stories take place during and following the sweeping social changes of the 20th century.

At his best, Mueenuddin narrates artfully on grand themes of fidelity and obsession while commenting on rampant corruption and substantial inequality in the patronage-based Pakistani class system. At times the prose borders on beautiful, telling enough details to picture, but not so many to slow the progression.

Several of his characters are profoundly likeable. The banter of the eponymous "Lily" made me think of a naughtier Audrey Hepburn sparring with herself as Princess Anne, and the choices of a young Sohail made me reflect upon the gravity of choices made while we are young. Such emotional proximity makes the tragedies painful, with victories scarce to come by and often at heavy price.

The stories are often so melancholy as to be cathartic. Lamentably, Mueenuddin sometimes loses the cathartic balance and tilts towards nihilism. His wealthy characters are often bored, their impoverished servants often desperate. Perhaps this is a resolute message, that the class system fails both so unutterably, choking the freedom of the individual for the sake of perpetuating itself, and yet rich and poor alike cling to fatalistic destiny without knowing of another way to live.

At times even the purpose of the stories seem to get lost, and I found myself asking "Daniyal, are you trying to tell me something important, or is this merely a nostalgiac vignette?" The connective tissue is not always clear between the many rooms of Mueenuddin's house of wonders, other than some association with the central family.

There were some endings that left me less than satisfied. After building his stories, his interdependent characters, to a profound and crushing climax, too often his denoument simply collapses into a two-sentence finale. Perhaps he wishes to show the tragedy intrinsic to servants' losing all importance once they leave the master's house, but it feels unfair to let my empathy with these poor tragic persons simply fade like tears in the rain.

Likewise, conversations sometimes resolve themselves. In "The Lady of Paris", a life choice is made in the briefest unspoken part of a conversation, between the questions of a future and the small talk that follows a resolution obvious only to the two conversants. The choice remains a secret until several stories later.

It is clear from this work that Mueenuddin has writing in his bones.
I gave three stars for an enjoyable, though sometimes frustrating, read, and hope to give four to his next set of short stories.

Daniyal Mueenuddin's debut collection of interconnected short stories, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" is a rare and entrancing treat: at once both exceptional literature and extraordinary literary cultural anthropology. This work stands as one of the finest works of new literature I've read all year. If you love global literature, don't miss this unique and exquisite reading experience!

Open this book, and you are at once immersed in the fascinating reality of an alien and intriguing culture -- the culture of Punjabi Pakistan. All the characters in these stories are connected to the same elite and powerful farming estate. You get to know the owners, their immediate family, relative, and lovers, servants, workers, managers, friends, colleagues, and local community and government officials. The stories take place within a fifty-year period, from the early 1960s to the present day. This time span gives you the opportunity to observe the culture in transition, as old ways are adapted to meet the emerging challenges of a modern global world.

This is a vibrant and rich culture very different from our own. The author does not compel you to judge this world, but rather to understand and appreciate it. This is an Islamic culture, but nowhere in the book is religion discussed and highlighted. This is a culture where corruption is endemic, infecting all aspects of society from the most intimate family connections to every kind of routine business and government transaction. This is a culture with deep feudal roots. Yet this culture works and is vibrant and alive on so many levels. One of the characters in the book, the rich highly educated American wife of the modern day landowner, discusses her life in Pakistan with a friend at a party saying, "It's strange, it's like a drug. I think that I miss the States so much -- and I do -- and then after a month there I'm completely bored. Pakistan makes everything else seem washed out."

The stories in this collection are simply magical, the characters so alive I can't get them out of my head. I feel an intimacy with this estate and these people. I feel as if I had lived among them. And what of Mueenuddin's prose? It's astonishing -- fresh, minimalist, rich, witty, often incredibly wise; he's a remarkable new voice in American literature. And, yes, Mueenuddin is an American and it is fitting that the first story in this collection, "Nawabdin Electrician," was chosen by Salman Rushdie (serving as Guest Editor) for inclusion in the 2008 edition of the famous literary series "The Best American Short Stories."

[If you read this work and find yourself loving this type of literary cultural anthropology, I also recommend that you try Mischa Berlinski's debut novel, "Fieldwork." It was a National Book Award fiction finalist in 2007. You will find my review for this book on Amazon.]

You've never read anything like this slim volume of eight interconnected short stories about life in modern Pakistan. I can almost guarantee it. Rescued from obscurity by its 2009 National Book Award nomination, Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a blend of portraits of Pakistani people, both rich and poor. The effect is a holistic image of everyday life in a country stuck in an seemingly endless loop of feudalism and class struggle.

Mueenuddin, who was born to a Pakistani father and American mother, spent seven years after college at Dartmouth trying to untangle the twisted network of kickbacks, favors, and below-the-level law enforcement at his father's farm in Pakistan. This experience -- the basis for these stories -- seems to have jaded Muennuddin a bit, as evidenced by a theme-setting Punjabi proverb included at the beginning of the book: "Three things for which we kill -- Land, women and gold."

The strength of the book, no doubt due to Mueenuddin's dual nationality, is how these stories cross the cultural divide. When a story focuses on the servant class, American readers have no trouble understanding these Pakistanis, their lot in life and their struggle to rise. That's true even if you're revolted by the male-dominated society and poor treatment of women. When these characters do bad things -- like commit adultery, or steal from their bosses -- it's still not hard to comprehend why. Sometimes there is no other choice. Sometimes it's a calculated strategy to try to move up.

In one story, a young woman, whose previously rich family has fallen on tough times, believes herself to be entitled to wealth and comfort. So she seduces the rich landowner Harouni (who is the common denominator in all the stories), takes him as her lover, and takes advantage of his generosity. However, when he dies, Harouni's scornful family turns her out completely. Now, her poverty is accompanied by even more shame. Similarly, in one heartbreaking story, a woman finally turns her life around by working hard as a servant at the rich landowner's house, only to wind up back on the streets as a heroin-addicted prostitute when Harouni dies.

So, the idea seems to be that if you're among the lower class, even if you adapt to the system, your margins still are rather thin. Your entire life and well-being is dependent on the whims and fate of your landowning boss. My favorite passage in the book sums up the dependency of servants on their masters. It is also emblematic of Mueenuddin's beautiful, elegant prose: "Gone, and they the servants would never find another berth like this one, the gravity of the house, the gentleness of the master, the vast damp rooms, the slow lugubrious pace, the order within disorder."

Several stories also focus on the upper class. The longest story in the collection, for instance, is about a rich Paris Hilton-like character who spends all her time partying, ordering servants around and living off her parents' wealth. Another story focuses on the son of a rich landowner, who is dating an American girl. These stories are okay, but don't match the pathos and poignancy of the stories about the servants.

Mueenuddin's writing and storytelling reach their pinnacle in the last story of the collection, my favorite. An old man, who has worked hard his whole life, finally catches a break when he's hired on as gardener at one of Harouni's farms. Newly wealthy (in relative terms), he hopes to sire a son, so he takes a deal to marry a mentally challenged girl, believing it to be his only chance to carry forth his name. The "simple" girl, though, promptly runs away. When he reports this to the police, he is beaten and accused of killing her. So even when things begin to look up for the poor man, the system beats him back down. It's the sad reality for life in the lower class in Pakistan, and these stories illuminate that brilliantly. This is an important book, and highly, highly recommended!

I heard this book being discussed on NPR a few months ago and got intrigued enough to read it. Maybe my expectations were high, but the book, while good, was not great. The south Asian diaspora is well represented in fiction as well as non-fiction literature -- witness Ms. Jhumpa Lahiri or Mr. Shashi Tharoor -- so I was expecting this book to be in the same league. To be sure, the book is not a bad piece of writing, it is just not a satisfying one. Many stories end abruptly, but few left me yearning for more. The book is a collection of short stories that have one common thread running through them: the protagonist in each story is in some way connected to K.K. Harouni, a wealthy Pakistani industrialist -- some protagonists are his employees while others are his relatives. Mr. Harouni himself is a side show in many stories, although he does not live long enough to be in all of them. There isn't a knot that ties the disparate stories at the end, each story is self contained. However, none of them made a deep impact on me like some short stories I have encountered by Ms. Arundhati Roy or Ms. Jhumpa Lahiri.

The book is enjoyable, to be sure. It presents the post-colonial life of wealthy industrialists in Pakistan with some measure, but in the end, none of the characters grab you so much that your mind dwells on them long after the story is done. (May 2009).

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Daniyal Mueenuddin's debut novel, stokes the traditional rivalry between two modern foes-India and Pakistan, but this time on the literary stage. Mueenuddin has written eloquently about life in the Islamic Republic and has shown that he too can claim his place amongst the Indian subcontinent's great writers. His command of the language and his description of the harshness of life, regardless of social status or the size of a bank account, prove that he is focused on conveying to the reader insights about all parts of society and no one, from the poor electrician on his motorbike, to the young Pakistani student recently returned from studying in the States, is immune from the constant social pressure to conform and keep the status quo. As equally insightful, Mueenuddin also weaves in beautiful moments of love and hope that are snatched from the pervading misery of life for most of the country's population. The birth of an out-of-wedlock child to a servant girl or the late marriage of a landless worker to a simple-minded bride, provide infrequent rays of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy outlook. What is Pakistan's long term forecast and is the population prepared to weather the storm of revolution, whether it be towards increasing democratization or Sharia law, has yet to be decided.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders should feel comfortable standing side-by-side with great modern Indian subcontinent contemporaries, such as Midnight's Children by Rushdie or A suitable Boy by Seth. Welcome to the stage, Mr. Mueenuddin. Your outlook is brilliant!

This is simply the finest book I've read in the last two years and I'm an avaricious reader. I'm a sucker for books about the sub-continent but this lovely miracle of a book surpasses everything. It is also the first book of short stories (pax Chekhov, Cheever and Updike) that I have been unable to put down. The man, without preciousness or self-conscious artiness draws a picture with 6 words that immediately places me in the emotional center of the story. His descriptions of characters in the process of hurting themselves makes me feel a kind of love for them. I slowed down my reading of his stories and found myself only willing to move to the next one when I knew I could find quiet. In fact, I MADE quiet for his stories. I cannot praise this writing enough.

Mr. Mueenuddin's writing is outstanding. The settings for each of the stories in "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" are particular and strange and beautiful. His characters range from maids to mistresses and much more in between, and he has a gift for describing the nuances of relationships, especially the transparent beginnings. [The book won won the regional prize for Best First Book of the 2010 Commonwealth Awards, though not the overall prize, although it had a finer title than any other nominee in any category.]

While I found all of the stories compelling and articulate, I was especially drawn to the ones describing the servant classes, because these aren't the stories usually told: Saleema is a maid in a large household, a bright, sexy, and sharp young thing. Nawabdin is a clever and adept electrician, with a prized possession to protect. My favourite was "A Spoiled Man" about Rezak, a solitary hardy old man who carries his little house with him everywhere he goes.

Perhaps the most startling and wonderful aspect of IOR,OW is the view it gives of feudal (and sometimes fancy) Pakistan. Mohsin Hamid's "Moth Smoke" was the first time I had ever heard of the elite ecstatic set in Lahore (of course they're everywhere). IOR,OW shows us this side (in "Lilly" and "Our Lady of Paris") but spends much more time in the countryside (such lovely intense detail), on the farms, in villages, and inside vicious and hierarchical servant quarters.

My only complaint was the often abrupt endings of many of the stories. The stories are longer than usual - they feel like mini-novellas - and so then, after such length and intricacy, I was disappointed by how suddenly a story like "Saleema" or "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" could end, or why a story like "Provide Provide" ends by detailing the fate of a side character that the reader has been given little reason to care about.

I also felt that most of the women characters had no agency (though I understand the integrity and reality of this) nor any trajectory of change or possibility in their lives. Saleema peters out, Lily's end is baffling and regressive (while her male lead swells into a hero, salt of the earth, pedigreed, of course, and noble), Husna is stymied, and Zainab abandoned. This is all fine and real, but there was something tragic or futile about them that I didn't feel in the male characters.

That all said: brill first book, brill book altogether. I'll look forward to the next.

You are born, you grow up, you fall in love, maybe you have children, you grow old, and you die - everywhere the same. Mueenuddin fills in the details, for the poor, the rich, interactions between the classes - in Pakistan (no terroists involved, thankfully). And makes it well worth reading with his masterful use of lanquage to describe the scenes, situations, motivations, and emotions involved - sometimes a moral imbedded, usually not - just telling it as it is - in Pakistan - and everywhere.