Daniyal Mueenuddin

A volume of linked stories describes the intertwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in Pakistan, in a collection that explores such themes as culture, class power, and desire. 50,000 first printing.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction and the 2009 Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. “The rural rootedness and gentle humour of R.K. Narayan with the literary sophistication and stylishness of Jhumpa Lahiri.”—Financial Times Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, these stories comprehensively illuminate a world, describing members of parliament and farm workers, Islamabad society girls and desperate servant women. A hard-driven politician at the height of his powers falls critically ill and seeks to perpetuate his legacy; a girl from a declining Lahori family becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress, thinking there will be no cost; an electrician confronts a violent assailant in order to protect his most valuable possession; a maidservant who advances herself through sexual favors unexpectedly falls in love. Together the stories in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders make up a vivid portrait of feudal Pakistan, describing the advantages and constraints of social station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Refined, sensuous, by turn humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed.

megan

i can’t put my finger on it, but there was just something about this book that didn’t quite do it for me

Yashar Nasir

In the spirit of James Joyce's "Dubliners," Mueenuddin's collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in Lahore, Pakistan.

Saima A

javaria

Judy Hudgins

Anooshay Abbasi

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders illuminates a place and people as it describes the overlapping worlds of an extended Pakistani landowning family. Servants, masters, peasants and socialites, all inextricably bound to each other, confront the advantages and constraints of their station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. These richly textured stories reveal the complexities of Pakistani class and culture, as they describe the loves, triumphs, misunderstandings and tragedies of everyday life.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

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