Reviews


"With this first-rate novel, Sethi joins an ever-expanding roster of gifted young Pakistani writers who, after graduating from Western universities, have returned home with an urgent need to explain their misunderstood country to a global audience. Through three generations of a Lahore family, Sethi charts the tumults within Pakistani political and social life since partition in 1947, including the regular vacillations between military rule and feeble attempts at democracy. Though distinctly restrained, Sethi’s prose evokes the comic mislocutions of Jonathan Safran Foer and the vertiginous mania of Zadie Smith. But he is often less interested in providing a social critique than in interpreting juvenescence, which seems no different on the Indian sub continent than it is here. Zaki Shirazi, the book’s narrator, grows up in a household of women — his conservative, disenfranchised grandmother; a headstrong mother who advocates sweeping societal change through the magazine she edits; and his teenage cousin, who fasts only for the purest reason: to get the boy. Zaki pre sents these characters’ engaging histories, along with his own youthful searches for acceptance, the undulations in their lives echoing those in Pakistani society. By juxtaposing references to American pop culture (“The Wonder Years,” Mariah Carey) with, say, the machinations of arranged marriages, Sethi exposes the essential friction of life in modern Pakistan. Even local karaoke bars reflect the country’s uncomfortable middle ground, offering songs “too new for nostalgia and not new enough to stir up the excitements of the present.”
-The New York Times Book Review

“[A] mature debut ... an insider’s atmospheric take on a culture and a country much in the news these days.”
-Publishers Weekly

“[Sethi] deftly employs the eyes of a journalist to exquisitely detail daily life in Lahore.”
-Library Journal

“[Sethi’s] take on a country so often in the news is sure to engage readers.”
-Booklist

"Sethi's debut novel, a bittersweet coming-of-age tale, is set in the politically turbulent Pakistan of the 1980s and '90s. Young Zaki is raised by his liberal journalist mother and an irresolute grandmother, who finally stands up to tyranny in her own family."
-USA Today

Praise from Fellow Writers

"The Wish Maker, in Ali Sethi's mature sure-handed prose, is an engaging family saga, an absorbing coming-of-age story, and an illuminating look at one of the world's most turbulent regions. Ali Sethi steadfastly resists the usual cliches about both Islam and his native country. Instead, he offers a nuanced, often humorous, and always novel look at life in modern-day Pakistan." - Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

"Reaching from a Massachusetts college to a restless Pakistan, The Wish Maker is a brilliant example of the new global novel, and a sad but sometimes funny song about the way we live now." - Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan

"The Wish Maker is a confident and personal debut. Ali Sethi's is a fresh voice from a new generation of Pakistani novelists." - Mohsin Hamid, author of Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

"Ali Sethi's prose dances. At once rollicking and controlled, virtuosic and unforced, it would be reason enough to admire this book. What's more impressive is that this skill pales beside the breadth of his perception and empathy. How he sees what he sees, how he understands what he understands, at so young an age, is astonishing." - Leah Hager Cohen, author of House Lights and Heart, You Bully, You Punk