Book Review

Imran Khan by Christopher Sandford
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Price: 12.99 UK P
ISBN: 978-0-00-731888-9
Page count: 402
Size: 9.3 x 6
Released: 2009

It is more than a biography. Christopher Sandford’s Imran Khan does not speak only about Pakistan’s celebrity and most spectacular cricket star. It is more than cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s life story. It covers Pakistan, its politics, economy, culture, and society. It talks about the difficult state of affairs the people of Pakistan have been living in. It tells us about Pakistani politicians’ tainted track record, political bickering by the military dictators who ruled the country, and its tense relations with the neighbouring India.


An acclaimed biographer and a seasoned writer, Christopher Sandford has maintained a simple and clear style throughout the book. A combination of witty and intelligent writing, Imran Khan takes a deep look into the celebrity cricket star’s personal life, his family and Pukhtoon tribal roots, his religious and political thoughts. Besides, it contains a fair degree of satire on Pakistani politics, leaders, dictators, and armed insurgents driven by religious extremism. Sandford brings in the likes of the ‘Islamic disc jokey named Maulana Fazalullah,’ and Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, ‘who enjoyed the nickname “Mullah Diesel”’ side-by-side telling Imran’s journey and describing him as the cricketer, the ultimate celebrity, the politician, and the philanthropist.


Sandford has produced a thorough and well-researched account of the life of a man with several roles, numerous accomplishments, and many controversies. Imran Khan, whose rise in cricket took the game to new heights, is the face of Pakistan. He is a ‘swarthy oriental maverick’ in the words of an unnamed source Sandford quoted in the book. To Wasim Raja, Imran “was a different man at different times…I [Raja:] knew at least three or four Imrans.”


Sandford informs his readers that Imran “was known to attend extended performances of Qawwalis, the mystic songs traditionally played on a stringed instrument called the Sarangi that can take up to half-an-hour to return between numbers, a more leisurely pace than that set even at the Pink Floyd concerts Imran later enjoyed.”


The author presents in detail Pakistan Cricket’s journey, looking into its more than half-a-century history that include many ups and downs. The cricketing part of Imran’s life dominates the book. It covers in detail his prolonged international sporting career, his lengthy association with the English County Cricket, his on-and-off the field rivalries (predominantly with fellow player Javed Miandad and officials of the Pakistani cricketing authorities).


Moving back and forth between the story of his cricketing years and political career, Sandford keeps switching to Imran’s much talked about late night London life and his many reported affairs involving European ‘socialites’ and ‘blondes.’ Sandford tells us about how Imran switched, in a quick succession of few years, from his one lover to another: Susannah Constantine to Kristiane Backer to Jemima Marcelle Goldsmith. The graphic details of Imran’s much reported relationship with the London socialite Sita White and how a U.S. court ruled young Tyrian Khan White to be Imran’s daughter also make part of the biography. Sandford gives several snapshot descriptions of his subject’s early advances to his female admirers.


Referring to one such incident, dating back to 1971when Imran toured England as part of the national cricket team, Sandford quotes a then 20-year-old legal secretary, Judy Flander, who “remembers Imran’s activities at a popular Manchester nightspot: ‘He sat round, smouldered, muttered a bit to his mates, didn’t dance, drank only milk, and rested his hand affectionately on my thigh.’” And, this is not the only time when readers would read about Imran drinking milk in discos and nightspots. They would read this fact of Imran’s quite often. “I hated being portrayed as a playboy [in London’s gossip columns:]. I wasn’t one – cricket was always my obsession,” Imran tells Sandford.


While describing Imran’s life the book touches many important personalities and non-cricketing events with proven significance in the history of Pakistan. Pakistan’s nuclear bomb tests in 1998, the rise of religious extremism, Musharraf’s military coup, lawyers’ movement for the restoration of the country’s top judiciary in 2007, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007 are among the events Sandford touched in his book on Imran.


Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman is referred to as the ‘Bengali militant,’ Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as ‘a champion of Islamic socialism’ and a pro for fighting a ‘1000 year war with India.’ President Asif Ali Zardari is described as ‘[the:] head of state … with a personal fortune estimated at between UK Pound 2.5 billion and 6 billion.’


Sandford’s reflections on Pakistan, in particular, and Imran Khan, in general, are hard to refute.


Reviewed by Intikhab Amir


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Book Review

Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender by John G. Stackhouse Jr


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Stackhouse selected a difficult, but brave, approach to put his words across. Finally Feminist is a book of theology in which the author has challenged the orthodox Christian views viz-a-viz women's status in church, society, and house. It is brave because it challenges the tradition of patriarchy. It questions various translations of the Scripture. And, it also challenges the secular feminists on way to prove its thesis: Christian feminism.
It takes a difficult approach to substantiate its claim about the prevalence of feminism in Christianity by maintaining a nice balance between the modern and orthodox Christian schools of thought. "Why both sides are wrong - and right" goes perfectly with the substance of the book as it takes a difficult route to establish its point by pointing out rights and wrongs from both the sides: egalitarians and orthodox Christians.
Stackhouse's scholarly work provides a voice to women and serves as a message for men: use your masculine strength for the benefit of women.
Though the book requires a better understanding of Christianity to aptly comprehend the message, Stackhouse's work does not leave even an ordinary non-Christian reader without an urge to expand her/his knowledge about the Christian history and its evolution.


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Book Review

The White Tiger

By Aravinda Adiga

Publisher: Atlantic Books London

Price: 6.99 UK P

ISBN: 978-1-84887-042-0

Page count: 321

Size: 4.5 x 7

Released: 2008

Intricate. Dazzling. Brilliant. The White Tiger has everything that makes a splendid novel: suspense, drama, satire, tension, clarity of thought, and simple language.

A conversational tone is maintained throughout the novel, which begins and ends in a unique way. Fascinating insights into today’s India make up part of a lengthy letter to the Prime Minister of China from Balram Halwaii, a sweet-maker-turned-driver-turned-murderer-turned-entrepreneur in Bangalore. It is about India and China’s emergence on the world economic scene. It is about ‘yellow’ and ‘brown’ men, posing a threat to the white-man domination of world affairs. The White Tiger is about India being paranoid of China!

Adiga’s India is “two countries in one: an India of Light and an India of Darkness.” The India of Light reflects the economic progress the country and its growing middle class have made. This India entails ‘a little America’ in Delhi and Bangalore; the former being a place that has seen many malls and high-rise apartment buildings come into existence to cater to the country’s expanding middle class and foreign investors, and the latter being the country’s modern face: a silicon valley with mushrooming Indian firms that do outsourcing for American technology giants Microsoft, Dell and Intel.

The Darkness is about the plight of ‘have nots’ – Delhi’s homeless people and Bangalore’s slum dwellers - and their exploitation by the rich - the landed gentry, the entrepreneurs, the corrupt elite and the ruling class. The rich “make people talk and talk about things that they have no say in” through a farcical parliamentary democracy - a system in which elections are rigged, and votes are bought and sold. Socialists and pro-democracy forces are no different.

Adiga seems to be well ahead of many Indian writers about whom noted author Salman Rushdie once said: “The new Indian writers’ work is as polymorphous as the place, and readers who care about the vitality of literature will find at least some of these voices saying something they want to hear.” Though India continues to be polymorphous because of economic growth, this connotation does not fit Adiga, whose first novel won him worldwide fame. The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.

This novel shows problem after problem infecting India like a dangerous disease.

Issues as delicate as the caste system, religious hatred, prostitution, and judicial corruption are discussed with uncompromising clarity. A masterful observer of society, Adiga shows us many ways a man – poor or rich – falls into corruption to satisfy his lust for money and power.

The central character of the novel is Balram Halwaii, the White Tiger, the ex-sweet maker, but it is not Balram’s story. It is India’s story. It is the story of a wild place, where the law of the jungle rules. Eat or be eaten up. It is the story of a place, where even an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black is of great utility. Utility for a poor driver, because of its resale value, and as a tool to kill!

Reviewed by Intikhab Amir