Moghul Buffet (Hardcover)

by Cheryl Benard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Both a wickedly funny cross-cultural comedy of errors and an edgy murder mystery, Benard's lively debut begins with the disappearance of timid, pudgy U.S. businessman Micky Malone in Peshawar, an ultraconservative, crime-ridden Pakistani backwater on the Afghan border. As other corpses pile up (victims include a Pakistani banker, a closeted gay Indian movie star and an anti-American Islamic fundamentalist publisher), dogged but inept Detective Iqbal stumbles from suspect to suspect. Bernard choreographs a series of comic misunderstandings (between East and West, men and women), training withering irony on a range of characters: Mara Blake, an earnest American refugee-camp worker reeling from her failed marriage to a wealthy Pakistani; the Maulana, a self-righteous Islamic fundamentalist televangelist; Fatima, his young housemaid and pregnant sex-slave; and the Maulana's nephew and chauffeur, Mushahed, a leftist economics student in love with Fatima. Even if the comedy occasionally sputters with indignation, Benard nimbly swings from farce to social satire, describing with devastating wit and fiery feminist passion Pakistani sexism, censorship, corruption and human rights abuses.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The American director of an Austrian research institute and author of several nonfiction works (e.g., "The Government of God": Iran's Islamic Republic, LJ 6/1/84), Benard debuts with a surprisingly successful black comedy/mystery reminiscent in its droll narrative style of the works of Australian author Peter Carey. The omniscient narrator weaves together seemingly disparate plotlines featuring rabid Islamic religious leaders, corrupt Pakistanis and Afghanis, naive American businessmen, feminists from all cultures and walks of life, journalists and policemen, Afghan refugees, the Taliban, and sexually exploited village girls, creating a compelling whodunit that races along to a bloody climax in the inhospitable desert of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Micky Malone, a quiet American like so many others trying to follow the rules while doing business in Asia, seems to have been murdered in his Peshawar hotel room, but his body is missing. As more killings occur and notes left at the scene point to a serial killer?clothed in a chaddri, the voluminous woman's coverall de rigueur in the province?tensions mount inexorably. Is the killer working in disguise, or could it be?horrors!?that a lowly woman is offing these creeps? Clever, witty, and politically and culturally on the mark, this book is recommended for all collections.?Jo Manning, formerly with General Books Lib., Reader's Digest
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 263 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374211795
• ISBN-13: 978-0374211790
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,716,390 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Debut, January 11, 2001

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Moghul Buffet (Soho Crime) (Paperback)

This is an interesting part mystery, part travelogue and part droll gentle voice for women's rights in Pakistan. First-time author Benard has written a cute little whodunit whilst employing an usual voice. There is an omniscient third-person narrator telling the story, often digressing into informing the reader on aspects of Pakistani culture. Many of the characters are types, but well-captured ones, and not ones usually seen in everyday reading, much less a mystery. The whole thing takes place in Peshawar, near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan and Benard does a nice job of capturing the different levels of society there (including a nascent Taliban band). The whodunit part is almost by the way, but the characters are easily lovable and hatable, and the whole thing glides along satisfactorily.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful debut novel set in Pakistan, September 16, 2003

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Moghul Buffet (Soho Crime) (Paperback)

Cheryl Benard plunks us down in Pakistan with a socially inept American businessman, adds a murder to the stew, sprinkles liberally with women hidden beneath chadors - and stirs in wicked funny narrative. The author is obviously familiar with Pakistan; although she is not a native, she strews her brew with stories about the locals: the police investigator and his modern wife, an ex-pat American who is a champion of the poorest of the poor, and a girl enslaved in a wealthy man's home. Each side character raises timely moral issues within the strictures of the Taliban who lurk in a nearby refugee camp. In spite of this heavy background, Moghul Buffet entertains at every step along the way.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book, then buy it!!, October 7, 1998

By A Customer

That's precisely what I did; took it off the shelf in the public library and then, once I'd finished the book (getting snagged on the solution of the mystery at the very end), went out and bought it for my personal collection. Benard is a rare author; her language is as humorous & elegant as it is simple, she spins a good yarn and, most important of all, she has her facts right. Ask me about the facts. I am an anthropologist from the Indian subcontinent of which Pakistan is a part. And male to boot. All too often I come across a potentially good story which is ruined by the setting; the places are hardly real, the people seem all wrong, the evidence which forms the basis for the plot is like a house of cards. Benard may call her writing "pop sociology," but if such fiction is proof of what she's capable of may she write on.