{"id":2465,"date":"2026-06-01T19:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T07:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=2465"},"modified":"2026-06-01T19:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T07:41:18","slug":"this-is-where-the-serpent-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/this-is-where-the-serpent-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Where The Serpent Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Daniel Mueenuddin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomsbury<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, May 2nd 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges of writing for an international audience is conveying a specific sense of time and place without alienating readers or resorting to caricature. It is a balancing act Daniyal Mueenuddin manages beautifully in his stunning debut novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set in Pakistan and spanning six decades from the 1950s to the 2010s, the story follows four linked narratives that capture the historical and contemporary divides of wealth and class of Pakistan society, and the complex, highly codified system of graft and corruption that maintain them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first story belongs to Yazid, abandoned as a toddler outside a Rawalpindi bazaar 1955. Taken in and raised by a nearby stall owner, Yazid is an intelligent and ambitious young man who cultivates friends not among \u201cthe boys like him who worked the shops and sold cheap trinkets [and ran] scams around the gallies\u201d but the sons of the rising middle class. For a brief moment it seems he might marry into a well-to-do political family, a dream sabotaged by a member of the household staff, and instead leaves in pursuit of wealth elsewhere, returning later in the novel as a driver for the Atars, a powerful landowning family in Lahore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second section we meet Rustom, heir to a farming dynasty newly returned to Pakistan after an education abroad. Despite hoping to manage things \u201caccording to new humane principles\u201d, a dispute with the neighbouring estate ultimately sees him revert to a more traditional solution; paying the gangsters who have traditionally served as the family \u2018muscle\u2019 to enforce his property rights. His story then turns to his cousin Hisham Atar, who reminisces with Rustum about meeting his wife, Shahnaz, and the competition between himself and his brother for her affections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This trio of narratives are rich and rewarding, but for me it is the fourth and final story,  centre on the son of the Atar\u2019s gardener, Saqib, that stands out. Mentored by a now elderly Yazid and treated as a favoured pet by Hisham and Shahnaz, he becomes one of the estate\u2019s most trusted farm managers. A scrupulous young man, he disapproves of the way the other managers spend years skimming of the estate\u2019s profits for themselves.  But, trusting in his special status in the family and his ability to make amends, he allows himself to tempted into an audacious fraud that could set him up for life \u2013 or ruin him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mueenuddin paints a vivid picture of Pakistan during the late 20th<\/sup> and early 21st<\/sup> century, and of the things people do for love, loyalty and family. But it is his ability to create complex, sympathetic and fully-rounded characters that truly stands out. Each aspires to something better and I so wanted them to succeed, particularly Saqib, whose choices had me shouting at him like an audience member at a pantomime. But even when they find some measure of contentment, each ultimately remains trapped by situation and circumstance. Anything else would be rose-tinted, and Mueenuddin respects his readers enough not to do so.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Mueenuddin Bloomsbury Otago Daily Times, May 2nd 2026 One of the challenges of writing for an international audience is conveying a specific sense of time and place without alienating readers or resorting to caricature. It is a balancing act Daniyal Mueenuddin manages beautifully in his stunning debut novel. Set in Pakistan and spanning six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[518,526,370,18],"class_list":["post-2465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-518","tag-daniel-mueenuddin","tag-fiction","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2477,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/2477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}