A Case of Exploding Mangoes

There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world’s sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of:

1. Mechanical failure

2. Human error

3. The CIA’s impatience

4. A blind woman’s curse

5. Generals not happy with their pension plans

6. The mango season

“A Case of Exploding Mangoes” by Mohammed Hanif is set in the months before and the days after the crash. Far from coming to a conclusion about the cause of Zia’s death, Hanif gleefully thickens the stew of conspiracy theories, introducing at least six other possible suspects, including a blind woman under sentence of death, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner, a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms and a junior trainee officer in the Pakistani Air Force named Ali Shigri, who is also the novel’s main narrator.

The novel cuts cleverly between Shigri’s self-told story of his assassination plans and third-person scenes from the last months of the man he is trying to murder, General Zia.

Some reviews :

‘Exuberant…darkly funny’-Robert MacFarlane New York Times Book Review

‘Unputdownable and darkly hilarious. Mohammed Hanif is a brave, gifted writer.’-Moshin Hamid

So just go for it !