A Case of Exploding Mangoes 'targeted by authorities after Urdu translation'

Mohammed Hanif reports that his Pakistani publisher was raided not long after his 2008 satire became available in the national language

Copies of a decade-old, Booker-longlisted satire about the death of Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul-Haq has been seized in a raid on the offices of its Pakistani publisher just weeks after it was finally translated into Urdu, according to its author Mohammed Hanif.

Hanif, a British Pakistani journalist and author, attributed the raid to “some people claiming to be from the ISI”, Pakistan’s military spy agency the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. They “barged into my Urdu publisher Maktaba Daniyal offices [and] confiscated all copies of Urdu translation of A Case of Exploding Mangoes,” Hanif said on Twitter, adding that they also threatened the publisher’s manager, demanded information about his whereabouts and threatened to return the next day to get lists of booksellers selling the novel.

Related: Mohammed Hanif: ‘To write about politics in Pakistan, you have to go abroad’

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