Book : Pittho's World
Author: Murtaza Razvi
ISBN : 9788172239343
Pages: 204
Price: 299
Rating : 1/5
What the book said:
No, I am no Scheherazade of the Arabian Nights, I tell Rani, when she agrees to listen to my stories.And I am no depraved king, she says ...
Pittho's World is the
magical domain of storytelling, of Sheikhu and his lover Rani, of parents, Big
Brother, uncles, aunts and grandparents. And of course, Aunt Pittho, she of the
big hips, wielding magic and a stick. The stories originate in Iran, move
through Afghanistan to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, before returning to rest
in Pakistan. Spanning two centuries and several generations, these are tales of
love and happiness, tragedy and malice, black magic and manslaughter, linked
together by two peoples love for storytelling, and for each other.
Published posthumously,
this delightful work of fiction by one of Pakistans best-known journalists
transports us to places and times long lost to humanity. They are stories of
life, but also of death which waits at the end, leaving in its wake a loneliness
that lingers.
Review:
It is said never judge a
book by its cover. I never really took this saying seriously until I came
across the book “Pittho’s World” by Murtaza Razvi. Everything that contributes
in the appearance of this book, from the cover to the blurb is kind of an
illusion as the actual content of the book is far from what the blurb promises
it to be. When I came across this book and read the blurb, the very mention of
Arabian Nights and Magic compelled me to pick it up. I expected a lot of short
stories with interesting Arabic background and some magical influence if not
really magic, but was disappointed. The book is a collection of stories from
the personal life of Sheikhu, the protagonist of the book. He narrates a series
of tales from his family’s origin in Iran to their present life in Pakistan, to
his girlfriend and reluctant listener Rani. The narration is dry and bland.
Moreover Pittho’s character just turns out to be a fragment of Sheikhu’s life and
doesn’t fit in as the centralized theme of the book making the very title an
illusion as well.
Pittho’s world suffers
right from the start with the character sketching of uninteresting orthodox
elders who tend to see the wrong in everything. As the story moves ahead it
gets even drier as the narration of every character follows the same tone and
lacks in imagination or innovation. Sheikhu makes an attempt to make Rani aware
of how she is related to him through a number of stories with strong themes of
life and death, but the dots really fail to paint a perfectly clear picture. Every
story runs in an intermittent manner and thus the book loses its points in the
department of ‘flow’. The lead characters Sheikhu and Rani also remain bound to their
roles of narrator and listener, respectively, till the very end with occasional
riposte from Rani; but unfortunately that is the maximum of character traits
Razvi managed to exploit.
Pros
- Characters from Sheikhu’s family – Even though I didn’t really like a lot of people of his dysfunctional family I found the character names kind of funny and interesting. The best part was none of the names were ever mentioned in the book. Their name was really their relation to Sheikhu or one of their prominent character traits. Also, the characters sketches were perfect to the T; you could understand each of them from the description given. So a gold star there to the author.
Cons
- Lack of imagination or good plot.
- Dry narration and weak protagonists.
- Slow and episodic stories strained the flow of the novel.
- Sheikhu and Rani are supposed to be lovers of storytelling, but the storytelling is flawed big time.
- Too many orthodox, kind of negative and non acceptable views in the very start of the book.
- The novel tries way too hard to find something magical in “Life” and fails.
Overall it was just a
onetime read for me and demanded a lot of patience to finish it. Maybe the
blurb built a lot of expectations for me and the book failed to click any of
them. I would rate it a 1 out of 5 star book. Apart from people who enjoyed
Razvi’s storytelling in Musharraf earlier or curious to explore new writers
this book will not have many takers.
P.S. - This book was given to me for review by Indiblogger and Harper Collins and this is my personal unbiased review.
P.S. - This book was given to me for review by Indiblogger and Harper Collins and this is my personal unbiased review.
