REBEL ENGLISH ACADEMY

A gently satirical novel of tangled lives in 1970s Pakistan.

Hanif’s narrative opens with the hanging of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The execution sends shock waves through the nation, not least in a provincial town where a former revolutionary, Sir Baghi, has founded an English-language school to teach the “sons and daughters of peasants and shopkeepers” a skill essential to advancing in Pakistani society long after independence from Britain. Baghi uses an idiosyncratic method, teaching single words, on the theory that these are enough to get most things done. Baghi is at pains from time to time to explain that he has no interest in women, quite unlike his friend Molly, the keeper of the town’s mosque: “For a man of Allah, Molly seems to have a slightly frisky relationship with his maker. Within the premises of the House of Allah and barely fifty metres away from his loving and waiting wife, his hanged hero still warm in his grave, Molly is busy testing his faith with a runaway woman.” Another runaway enters the scene in the form of a former student who takes lessons from Baghi while avoiding inquisitive government agents. Her homework assignments yield often hilarious, sharp-witted results; instructed to write an essay on bovines, she responds, “I can’t write that the cow is Allah’s splendorous creation because Sir doesn’t believe in the existence of Almighty and His numerous manifestations.” One such agent, the villain of the piece, resents being posted to a backwater, but he’s diligent in pursuing enemies of the state: “He knows this much about civilians: they bullshit before they get to the point.” So they do, and Hanif’s novel takes increasingly picaresque turns, with a cameo appearance by the likes of boxing great Muhammad Ali, even as local politics grow ever more violent.

An elegantly spun tale that punctures holes in our every expectation of life in an authoritarian state.