In 2010, Mohsin Hamid was asked by Granta to contribute to a piece entitled “How to write about Pakistan”. Other poets or novelists might have railed against accounts littered with mullahs, military generals, secret agencies and American drones. Hamid, characteristically droll, drew up a list of 10 commandments of which the first three were: “Must have mangoes”; “Must have maids who serve mangoes”; “Maids must have affairs with man servants who should occasionally steal mangoes.”
In Discontent and Its Civilizations, a collection pulling together essays and reviews from the past 15 years, he talks about the way in which Pakistan “plays a recurring role as villain in the horror sub-industry within the news business”. In his eyes, the nation in which he grew up, and to which he returned in 2009 after lengthy stints living in cities on both sides of the Atlantic, is less diabolical; he loves the “out-of-character Pakistan, Pakistan without its makeup and plastic fangs, a working actor with worn-out shoes, a close family, and a hearty laugh”.
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