Writer captures Pakistani history in a novel

LISTEN

Embed | Help

Copy and paste the HTML below to embed this audio onto your web page.

Audio player code:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://minnesota.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/js/swfobject.js"></script><div id="minnesota_news_features_2009_06_15_alisethi_20090615_64s_player"></div><script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/var so = new SWFObject("http://minnesota.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/s_player.swf", "minnesota_news_features_2009_06_15_alisethi_20090615_64s_player", "319", "83", "8", "#ffffff");so.addParam("quality", "high");so.addParam("menu", "false");so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");so.addVariable("name", "minnesota/news/features/2009/06/15/alisethi_20090615_64");so.write("minnesota_news_features_2009_06_15_alisethi_20090615_64s_player");/*]]>*/</script>

sponsor:

Pakistan is a relatively young country, formed by the partition of India in 1947.

Yet when Ali Sethi set out to explore his homeland's history for a creative writing class, he discovered relatively little of its complex multi-lingual cultural history had been written down.

St. Paul, Minn. — Sethi has tried to change that with his novel "The Wish Maker." The book has critics hailing him as a new international literary voice.

It's the story of four generations of a family living in Lahore in Pakistan, although much of the action is in the 1990s when Sethi (pronounced 'say-TEE') was a boy. He says as he wrote he had to wrestle with the complexities of Pakistan.

Broadcast Dates

• All Things Considered, 06/15/2009, 4:54 p.m.