The Wish Maker

" Zaki Shirazi returns to Lahore to celebrate the wedding of his cousin and childhood companion Samar Api (who has finally, it seems, found her Amitabh). Home is not what it used to be; "

Musharraf is in power, there has been a boom, and Lahore seems to have seen 'too much too soon'. Zaki's estrangement, amidst the flurry of wedding preparations in the house he grew up in, takes him back to his past: his childhood as a fatherless boy growing up in a household of outspoken women, and his and Samar's intertwined journeys from youth to adulthood.

The Wish Maker, in Ali Sethi's mature and sure-handed prose, is an engaging family saga, an absorbing coming-of-age story, and an illuminating look at one of the world's most turbulent regions. Ali Sethi steadfastly resists the usual clichés about both Islam and his native country. Instead, he offers a nuanced, often humorous, and always novel look at life in modern day Pakistan.