Fatima Bhutto
“When I’m writing fiction, I’m obsessed by an idea that is mine and mine alone – no one needs to know what I’m thinking about and what I’m doing because I need concentration, solitude, and focus in order to fully imagine the world that I’m creating. Non-fiction is less secretive and more collaborative because you need to go out and speak to people and dig out information. It requires you to test your idea out constantly.”
“A probing look at some of the shifting tides of global culture. Having borne witness to the throes of political upheaval in her birth country of Pakistan, journalist and novelist Bhutto here explores the local roots and global impact of three contemporary pop-culture game-changers: Bollywood (India), dizi (Turkey), and K-Pop. Many American readers may be surprised to learn that what’s entertaining much of the rest of the world no longer hails from Hollywood or New York....Witty and packed with detail, this is an intercultural shot that should be heard around the world.”
“Fatima Bhutto vividly renders the seductions of Islamic radicalization in such a way that we understand both its historical specificity and its universal roots in idealism and desire, rage and romance, youth and rebellion. Drawn from the headlines but plunging much deeper, The Runaways is a novel for our difficult times.”
“An intense and powerful work of fiction…The Shadow of the Crescent Moon rises above melodrama, tying us to the page at the same time it presents us with larger questions about the troubled people of this troubled region. Bhutto works with the delicacy of a poet and the prime-time urgency of a front-line correspondent in order to capture these tortured cries of her beloved country.”
“Moving, witty . . . a uniquely fascinating, wonderfully well-constructed memoir.”
Fatima Bhutto is the author of the novels The Runaways (Viking, 2019), praised as “astute and searing” by Kirkus Reviews, and The Shadow of the Crescent Moon (Penguin Books, 2015), longlisted for Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent nonfiction book is New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop (Columbia Global Reports, 2019, which argues that the West’s cultural influence is diminishing across the globe. Her first book is Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir (Nation Books, 2010) which deals with her father’s murder and the Bhutto family's history in Pakistani politics. Her father Murtaza Bhutto, son of Pakistan's former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and an elected member of parliament, was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. The Guardian wrote, “In clear and unpretentious prose it gives a vivid impression of the brutal and corrupt world of Pakistani power politics, which has resulted in the violent deaths of four members of the Bhutto dynasty in the past 31 years.” Bhutto’s journalism and essays have appeared in New Statesman, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Nation, Literary Hub and elsewhere.
In an interview with PopMatters on New Kings of the World, Bhutto was asked about her switch from fiction to nonfiction: “As a reader, I love both fiction and non-fiction. As a writer, some topics are only doable as fiction and others are clearly made for non-fiction. I’ve always been fascinated by the topic of culture, especially the politics of popular culture and soft power. I wanted to write about the rise of Asia and the politics behind its rising cultural giants because it seemed to be something we need to be watching at this moment in time.”
Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She graduated from Columbia University in 2004, majoring in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2005 with a Masters in South Asian Government and Politics.
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(c) Allegra Donn
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