Karachi Vice

June 21, 2021
Journalist Shackle debuts with an evocative portrait of Karachi’s political, ethnic, and criminal conflicts. In the 70 years since the partition of India, the population of Pakistan’s largest city has grown from 500,000 to 20 million, a staggering rate of expansion that has left vast sections of the city dependent on mafia groups to provide basic services such as water and electricity. Meanwhile, the waves of migration that have fueled Karachi’s growth have also given rise to “noxious ethnic political movements” that intimidate opponents through violence. Shackle centers her narrative on five Karachiites, including a street school teacher who varies her route to her small rooftop classroom to avoid gangs, a local crime reporter who chases down leads on police executions, and an ambulance driver who navigates the city’s alleyways to aid those injured in street battles and bombings. Shackle’s profiles touch on traumas in the city’s recent history, in particular the 2014 terrorist attack on the Jinnah International Airport and ensuing military and police crackdown, while also revealing Karachi’s “gravitational pull” on Pakistan and the world. Vivid prose and Shackle’s skillful balancing of the personal and the political make this a worthy introduction to a complex metropolis.

July 1, 2021
A journalist who has spent significant time in Karachi fashions a series of narrative portraits of the city's beleaguered denizens, suffering "one of the worst outbreaks of violence" since the 1990s. A coastal city bloated by migration since Partition in 1947, Karachi was the first capital of Pakistan, until 1967, and it remains the economic heart of the country. In these affecting portraits of five Karachiites trying to make a living in the dense, teeming metropolis, New Humanist editor Shackle--whose family emigrated from Pakistan to the U.K. in the 1970s before she was born--reveals the struggles of the countless disparate groups competing for physical space, jobs, and basic services like health care and sanitation as violent Mafia groups step in to fill the void left by a largely military government. Safdar, a young Pashtun who "emanates an electric energy," is determined to become an ambulance driver after a childhood in which he helped take care of his polio-stricken brother. The job is one of the most dangerous in the city, taking him to retrieve corpses left by rival gangs. But he perseveres in order to help his fellow citizens, even thinking that he must eschew marriage because of the danger. Parveen, a young teacher in the "street schools" of Lyari, tries desperately to keep her vulnerable staff and pupils from joining the neighborhood gangs, at her own peril. Jannat, who lives in an isolated village just outside of the city, managed to complete school beyond the fifth grade, the first in the village to do so, but her prospects for personal advancement were thwarted by early marriage and children. In addition to the eye-opening personal stories, Shackle weaves in Pakistani history, including the rise of the Taliban and the dizzying array of political parties, riots, natural disasters, and sectarian violence that have plagued the city for more than a decade. The author also includes a timeline (1992-2018) and a list of relevant political groups. Moving tales of ordinary people navigating an unimaginable degree of violence and strife.

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August 1, 2021
Since Partition in 1947, Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, has grown from 500,000 people to nearly 20 million. Journalist Shackle tells the story of five Karachi residents as they face gang violence, government corruption, and the absence of basic resources like water and electricity. Ambulance driver Safdar sees the best and worst of humanity as he travels through gunfire into the most dangerous areas of Karachi to retrieve the wounded and the dead. Teacher Parveen and cartographer Siraj struggle to find space for their activism in a city where cooperation with gangs of criminals or police officers seems like the only way to get things done. Crime reporter Zille's recognizable face puts him at risk when he's placed on an extremist group's hit list. And wife and mother Jannat tries to make ends meet as her ancestral village of Lal Baksh Kachehlo faces extermination by greedy developers. Karachi Vice paints a vivid and compassionate picture of a metropolis struggling with poverty, ethnic tensions, corruption, and the scars of colonialism.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.