The two novels written by Haroon Khalid Akhtar are deceptive. They are anything but simple reads. As they say, never judge a book by its cover. Perhaps, his books are best enjoyed if read more than once. Haroon in person is quite similar. Much of what he says is said with his tongue firmly placed in his cheek. And sometimes in both the cheeks!
Being the son of a distinguished Urdu writer, Mohammad Khalid Akhtar, Haroon has large shoes to fill. I would say, he almost has. Haroon is a keen observer of society. One can find evidence of this in Threadbare — a compilation of his weekly articles for a newspaper.
He was born in Lahore and is an MBA from LUMS. He works as Group Head of Compliance at a large bank. His first novel, A Melody of A Tear, that tilts towards ‘magic realism’, took 10 years to see the light of day. But the rewards were sweet. It won the UBL Award for Best Fiction.
His latest novel, The Liar’s Truth (TLT), is a diversion of sorts from the first novel’s magic realism. It is an outright political satire. TLT may draw in a lot of English fiction readers given our national (mostly male) obsession with politics.
Ever since the liberalization of the electronic media during the General Pervez Musharraf era of Enlightened Moderation, people have begun to digest news as infotainment. What is (or is perceived) to be going on in the country becomes a colourful mixture of gossip and actual news. Haroon seems to have taken inspiration from all this to conjure a dark comedy, executed with great relish.
The main protagonist in TLT, Arsalan, reminded me of the lines written by F.S. Aijazuddin in his weekly column in Dawn recently, “Those whom the gods wish to punish, they first make cricketers and then prime ministers. Both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have played cricket and politics. They have won and lost. They now share the unenviable distinction of having been ousted from the same perilous post, the prime ministership of Pakistan — Nawaz Sharif thrice (in 1993, 1999, and in 2017) and Imran Khan most recently on April 10, 2022.”
Arsalan is a banker with zero ambition. His sole aim in life is to please his equally unambitious boss. Arsalan has also played cricket at some point in his life. Then, as if out of the blue, he is handpicked by the front-man of ‘the boys’ (referred in the novel as ‘Zeus’) to form a team of equally inept, unrelated but well-intentioned people to form a government. Ring any bells?
Zeus wants to ‘select’ a new team to save the country from the cycle of corrupt, dynastic rulers. One may ask, where is the satire in this? This is real life. But satire is about reality. In fact, reality can sometimes mutate into becoming an unintentional self-parody. And here’s where Haroon’s writing prowess really kicks in.
His bittersweet satire is so close to reality that while it makes you smile, it can also make you uncomfortable. After all, we are all suckers for fiction presented as ‘news,’ and incompetence as ‘tabdeeli,’ no? Phrases such as, “as a nation, we are getting better at hating each other all the time” exhibit how he has translated what he has absorbed from his surroundings. “In its present bleeding state, my large city appears small-minded, making foes out of school children and gunmen out of neighbours” is another example.
Arsalan has people in his team that include a Kanjar, a Mirasi, a Raddiwala, a Hasina, an octogenarian and a match-fixer. The nicknames are clearly picked up from the slang one often comes across on the streets of Karachi and Lahore. How we love dishing out such labels. A riot ensues when this team gets together to run the country. And the now PM Arsalan has to prove himself innocent when his lover is accused of being a spy.
Haroon has done a sharp job in creating what one can call, a comedy of contradictions. Interestingly, he has also brought into play his experience as a banker by commenting, with equal bits of satire, on office hierarchies. Who knows, the characters in the novel may well be actual people he has interacted with in these hierarchies.
Haroon maintains a dry wit and a subtlety across the novel that leaves one to truly appreciate the nuances of everyday life that he has turned into a political fantasy, albeit satirical.
TLT couldn’t have been written at a more apt time. The country witnessed a vote of no-confidence, a new prime minister, and a barrage of “quom se khitabs”. While it remains to be seen how Pakistan will pull out of its latest political crisis, I am sure it has already given Haroon enough fodder to work on his third novel.
So, is TLT about life imitating satire, or satire imitating life, or is it both? I think both. In Pakistan, there’s hardly a difference between the two.
Being the son of a distinguished Urdu writer, Mohammad Khalid Akhtar, Haroon has large shoes to fill. I would say, he almost has. Haroon is a keen observer of society. One can find evidence of this in Threadbare — a compilation of his weekly articles for a newspaper.
He was born in Lahore and is an MBA from LUMS. He works as Group Head of Compliance at a large bank. His first novel, A Melody of A Tear, that tilts towards ‘magic realism’, took 10 years to see the light of day. But the rewards were sweet. It won the UBL Award for Best Fiction.
His latest novel, The Liar’s Truth (TLT), is a diversion of sorts from the first novel’s magic realism. It is an outright political satire. TLT may draw in a lot of English fiction readers given our national (mostly male) obsession with politics.
Arsalan is a banker with zero ambition. His sole aim in life is to please his equally unambitious boss. Arsalan has also played cricket at some point in his life. Then, as if out of the blue, he is handpicked by the front-man of ‘the boys’ (referred in the novel as ‘Zeus’) to form a team of equally inept, unrelated but well-intentioned people to form a government. Ring any bells?
Ever since the liberalization of the electronic media during the General Pervez Musharraf era of Enlightened Moderation, people have begun to digest news as infotainment. What is (or is perceived) to be going on in the country becomes a colourful mixture of gossip and actual news. Haroon seems to have taken inspiration from all this to conjure a dark comedy, executed with great relish.
The main protagonist in TLT, Arsalan, reminded me of the lines written by F.S. Aijazuddin in his weekly column in Dawn recently, “Those whom the gods wish to punish, they first make cricketers and then prime ministers. Both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have played cricket and politics. They have won and lost. They now share the unenviable distinction of having been ousted from the same perilous post, the prime ministership of Pakistan — Nawaz Sharif thrice (in 1993, 1999, and in 2017) and Imran Khan most recently on April 10, 2022.”
Arsalan is a banker with zero ambition. His sole aim in life is to please his equally unambitious boss. Arsalan has also played cricket at some point in his life. Then, as if out of the blue, he is handpicked by the front-man of ‘the boys’ (referred in the novel as ‘Zeus’) to form a team of equally inept, unrelated but well-intentioned people to form a government. Ring any bells?
Zeus wants to ‘select’ a new team to save the country from the cycle of corrupt, dynastic rulers. One may ask, where is the satire in this? This is real life. But satire is about reality. In fact, reality can sometimes mutate into becoming an unintentional self-parody. And here’s where Haroon’s writing prowess really kicks in.
His bittersweet satire is so close to reality that while it makes you smile, it can also make you uncomfortable. After all, we are all suckers for fiction presented as ‘news,’ and incompetence as ‘tabdeeli,’ no? Phrases such as, “as a nation, we are getting better at hating each other all the time” exhibit how he has translated what he has absorbed from his surroundings. “In its present bleeding state, my large city appears small-minded, making foes out of school children and gunmen out of neighbours” is another example.
Haroon has done a sharp job in creating what one can call, a comedy of contradictions. Interestingly, he has also brought into play his experience as a banker by commenting, with equal bits of satire, on office hierarchies.
Arsalan has people in his team that include a Kanjar, a Mirasi, a Raddiwala, a Hasina, an octogenarian and a match-fixer. The nicknames are clearly picked up from the slang one often comes across on the streets of Karachi and Lahore. How we love dishing out such labels. A riot ensues when this team gets together to run the country. And the now PM Arsalan has to prove himself innocent when his lover is accused of being a spy.
Haroon has done a sharp job in creating what one can call, a comedy of contradictions. Interestingly, he has also brought into play his experience as a banker by commenting, with equal bits of satire, on office hierarchies. Who knows, the characters in the novel may well be actual people he has interacted with in these hierarchies.
Haroon maintains a dry wit and a subtlety across the novel that leaves one to truly appreciate the nuances of everyday life that he has turned into a political fantasy, albeit satirical.
TLT couldn’t have been written at a more apt time. The country witnessed a vote of no-confidence, a new prime minister, and a barrage of “quom se khitabs”. While it remains to be seen how Pakistan will pull out of its latest political crisis, I am sure it has already given Haroon enough fodder to work on his third novel.
So, is TLT about life imitating satire, or satire imitating life, or is it both? I think both. In Pakistan, there’s hardly a difference between the two.