num_pages: 256
description: When Daru Shezad is fired from his banking job in Lahore, he begins a decline that plummets the length of this sharply drawn, subversive tale. Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the wife of his childhood friend and rival, Oziâ€”the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player even as corruption drains its political will.Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a contemporary Pakistan as far more vivid and disturbing than the exoticized images of South Asia familiar to most of the West. This debut novel establishes Mohsin Hamid as a writer of substance and imagination.
language: English
title: Moth Smoke
titlecomplete: Moth Smoke
genres: Literature, Crime, Asian Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels, Asia, Fiction, Pakistan, Contemporary, Mystery
ratings_count: 11183
places: Lahore, Punjab
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Betty Trask Award, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
publisher: Picador: NY