Book Review

Catch-22
By Joseph Heller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Price: $ 16
ISBN: 0-684-83339-5
Page Count: 453
Size: 10.5 x 7
Released: 1994

Ever since January 2009 when one of my teachers recommended me to read Catch-22, I have had a preset notion of the novel. I expected it to be hilarious, comical, and entertaining to the extent of a light piece of writing. I found it to be more than that. Rather, much more than that. It’s a story of human perseverance, persistence, determination, and diligence put in a highly funny way.

Joseph Heller takes us back to the world that it was during the Second World War. Catch-22’s plot is rooted in the Second World War, and the story revolves around an American fighter pilot, Yossarian, who is fatigued by the conflict and wants to be sent home. He makes every effort to escape the war. He has a point: there are thousands of people who are bent upon to kill him!

Yossarian is, apparently, an undisciplined, annoying, and unmanageable soldier. However, he ends up as somebody who defies all odds to persevere himself for reasons that are not personal. He prefers common interest over personal glory.

Heller maintains a nice balance between sanity and people driven by insanity. “Ideals are good, but people are sometimes not so good. You must try to look up at the big picture,” Major Danby tells Yossarian in an effort to make him stick to his deal with the military high-ups. The proposed deal serves as a patch up between Yossarian and his military bosses.

Yossarian, who decides to go against the deal, replies affirmatively: “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”

Catch-22 is full of pun and entertainment. It discusses the Allied forces’ military might in a charmingly entertaining way. Heller’s description of the Allied forces’ efficiency is sharp and hilarious. “Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there’s never any rush.”

Heller doesn’t restrict his story to the war zone. Similarly, the novel’s scope is not limited to the soldiers who are fatigued by war or those who take it as an opportunity to prove their valour by bombing and killing innocent civilians. The story is neither restricted to human annihilation nor to devastating effects of the war. Rather, it is more of a combination of all. Heller helps us understand the 1940s world politics. In a very light and jovial way, he describes the US foreign policy interests and what was at stake for it to win the war.

Rated as a ‘monumental artifact of contemporary American literature’ by the New York Times Book Review, Catch-22 has outlived its longevity. It was written in 1962, but it is still fresh, inventive, and brilliant. This is mainly because of Heller’s witty, humorous, and bitterly funny style. The novel is going to be remembered for ever. It has to its credit something really distinctive. Catch-22 added a new term to the dictionary: Catch-22.

Reviewed by Intikhab Amir

Book Review

Imran Khan
By Christopher Sandford
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Price: 12.99 UK P
ISBN: 978-0-00-731888-9
Page count: 402
Size: 9.3 x 6
Released: 2009

It is more than a biography. Christopher Sandford’s Imran Khan does not speak only about Pakistan’s celebrity and most spectacular cricket star. It is more than cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s life story. It covers Pakistan, its politics, economy, culture, and society. It talks about the difficult state of affairs the people of Pakistan have been living in. It tells us about Pakistani politicians’ tainted track record, political bickering by the military dictators who ruled the country, and its tense relations with the neighbouring India.

An acclaimed biographer and a seasoned writer, Christopher Sandford has maintained a simple and clear style throughout the book. A combination of witty and intelligent writing, Imran Khan takes a deep look into the celebrity cricket star’s personal life, his family and Pukhtoon tribal roots, his religious and political thoughts. Besides, it contains a fair degree of satire on Pakistani politics, leaders, dictators, and armed insurgents driven by religious extremism. Sandford brings in the likes of the ‘Islamic disc jokey named Maulana Fazalullah,’ and Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, ‘who enjoyed the nickname “Mullah Diesel”’ side-by-side telling Imran’s journey and describing him as the cricketer, the ultimate celebrity, the politician, and the philanthropist.

Sandford has produced a thorough and well-researched account of the life of a man with several roles, numerous accomplishments, and many controversies. Imran Khan, whose rise in cricket took the game to new heights, is the face of Pakistan. He is a ‘swarthy oriental maverick’ in the words of an unnamed source Sandford quoted in the book. To Wasim Raja, Imran “was a different man at different times…I [Raja] knew at least three or four Imrans.”

Sandford informs his readers that Imran “was known to attend extended performances of Qawwalis, the mystic songs traditionally played on a stringed instrument called the Sarangi that can take up to half-an-hour to return between numbers, a more leisurely pace than that set even at the Pink Floyd concerts Imran later enjoyed.”

The author presents in detail Pakistan Cricket’s journey, looking into its more than half-a-century history that include many ups and downs. The cricketing part of Imran’s life dominates the book. It covers in detail his prolonged international sporting career, his lengthy association with the English County Cricket, his on-and-off the field rivalries (predominantly with fellow player Javed Miandad and officials of the Pakistani cricketing authorities).

Moving back and forth between the story of his cricketing years and political career, Sandford keeps switching to Imran’s much talked about late night London life and his many reported affairs involving European ‘socialites’ and ‘blondes.’ Sandford tells us about how Imran switched, in a quick succession of few years, from his one lover to another: Susannah Constantine to Kristiane Backer to Jemima Marcelle Goldsmith. The graphic details of Imran’s much reported relationship with the London socialite Sita White and how a U.S. court ruled young Tyrian Khan White to be Imran’s daughter also make part of the biography. Sandford gives several snapshot descriptions of his subject’s early advances to his female admirers.

Referring to one such incident, dating back to 1971when Imran toured England as part of the national cricket team, Sandford quotes a then 20-year-old legal secretary, Judy Flander, who “remembers Imran’s activities at a popular Manchester nightspot: ‘He sat round, smouldered, muttered a bit to his mates, didn’t dance, drank only milk, and rested his hand affectionately on my thigh.’” And, this is not the only time when readers would read about Imran drinking milk in discos and nightspots. They would read this fact of Imran’s quite often. “I hated being portrayed as a playboy [in London’s gossip columns]. I wasn’t one – cricket was always my obsession,” Imran tells Sandford.

While describing Imran’s life the book touches many important personalities and non-cricketing events with proven significance in the history of Pakistan. Pakistan’s nuclear bomb tests in 1998, the rise of religious extremism, Musharraf’s military coup, lawyers’ movement for the restoration of the country’s top judiciary in 2007, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007 are among the events Sandford touched in his book on Imran.

Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman is referred to as the ‘Bengali militant,’ Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as ‘a champion of Islamic socialism’ and a pro for fighting a ‘1000 year war with India.’ President Asif Ali Zardari is described as ‘[the] head of state … with a personal fortune estimated at between UK Pound 2.5 billion and 6 billion.’

Sandford’s reflections on Pakistan, in particular, and Imran Khan, in general, are hard to refute.

Reviewed by Intikhab Amir

Book Review

Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender by John G. Stackhouse Jr

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Stackhouse selected a difficult, but brave, approach to put his words across. Finally Feminist is a book of theology in which the author has challenged the orthodox Christian views viz-a-viz women's status in church, society, and house. It is brave because it challenges the tradition of patriarchy. It questions various translations of the Scripture. And, it also challenges the secular feminists on way to prove its thesis: Christian feminism.

It takes a difficult approach to substantiate its claim about the prevalence of feminism in Christianity by maintaining a nice balance between the modern and orthodox Christian schools of thought. "Why both sides are wrong - and right" goes perfectly with the substance of the book as it takes a difficult route to establish its point by pointing out rights and wrongs from both the sides: egalitarians and orthodox Christians.

Stackhouse's scholarly work provides a voice to women and serves as a message for men: use your masculine strength for the benefit of women.

Though the book requires a better understanding of Christianity to aptly comprehend the message, Stackhouse's work does not leave even an ordinary non-Christian reader without an urge to expand her/his knowledge about the Christian history and its evolution.

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