An Audio Interview with Daniyal Mueenuddin
Courtesy of PBS News Hour's Art Beat
May 2009
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PBS News Hour's Jeffrey Brown interviews debut author Daniyal Mueenuddin, debut author of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, connected stories a major literary debut that explores class, culture, power, and desire among the ruling and servant classes of Pakistan. In the spirit of Joyce's Dubliners and Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, Daniyal 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 the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan. An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Mueenuddin baresat times humorously, at times tragicallythe complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed. "A stunning achievement. … Such is its narrative power that I couldn't stop turning the page."Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist Daniyal Mueenuddin attended Dartmouth College and Yale Law School. After working as a lawyer in New York City, he now manages a farm in Pakistan.
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