informative, insightful and interesting

Packed with historical background, with cultural and socioeconomic factors/information/explanation, as well as detailed analysis, a well-written book that's worth listening to.

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A pretty miserable tale, well told

If you are interested in the story of Pakistan from independence (1947) to the present day (well, 2013) this book provides a wonderful sweep. For me it was one of those excellent books that packages all the snippets of news from my whole life time and groups and organises them into one comprehensible narrative. I'm not able to judge whether M. Haqqani is biased, but he certainly has been in the thick of Pakistani politics for many years (the book gets noticeably more lively once he moves from history to his first hand experiences), but he seems to be able to take a reasonably objective view of American and Pakistan's desires, beliefs, and errors. It is pretty downbeat, overall, delusions and misunderstanding indeed.

Warning - the book is detailed and sometimes seems repetitive (maybe that is history) so you really do have to be interested in the subject to pay attention through 14 hours.

Narrator was perfectly cast. The voice sounds like an educated foreign-office type with slightly Indian intonations. Fourteen hours of genuine Pakistani accented English would have been too tiring for this UK listener.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellently informative.

full of revelations not only about America and Pakistan's special arrangement but also about the delusion Pakistan has been labouring under since 1947.
Want to know how Pakistan thinks about itself or the rest of the world?
want to know about the double game Pakistan is totally committed to?
look no further.

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Completely Biased Narrative

This book was a waste of time, the author is accused of being an American stooge by his own admission. Quite rightly so in my opinion. He had absolutely nothing good to say about a single one of Pakistan’s leaders, and made out USA and it’s secret agencies as if they are the most honest and honourable people around. I suppose he needs his green card the sell out.

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4 people found this helpful

A very good effort by Husain Haqqani.

its a shame that not many in Pakistan will read or agree with this book.

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very insightful

Proving that truth can be stranger than fiction!
Gives you a ringside and very rare seat to the arena of international politics

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Very one sided

The way Mr Haqqani tells it, the U.S were not dissimilar in their innocent naivety to the indigenous Americans when Columbus (in this book played by all Pakistanis to ever deal with the U.S with the exception of himself) landed on their shores. You really feel for the Americans as they trade away all their gold in return for shiny but worthless pieces of glass. I had a lump in my throat each time the young American virgin entered the dark prison cell filled with lascivious Pakistani inmates. Really tough to read.
It was tough for me to read, but I forced myself to read this only as a challenge to find some shred of evidence as to his Pakistani-ness. In the end I found what I was looking for.... right at, literally, the very end. In one of the final sentences he writes he says something about essentially being so critical of Pakistan, for it's own good. Yet, I don't mind him or anyone being critical of Pakistan, only an unreasonable person would be uncritical of Pakistan. All Pakistanis are critical of Pakistan - we can all see it's a mess. But Mr Haqqani is one of those Pakistanis who rues the day Pakistan was created.
Anyway, Mr, Haqqani is entitled to his opinion, but in a professional capacity, to ignore the unhealthy dynamics that have needed to exist to hold Pakistan together and to be utterly unaware of American objectives within the region wrt the Chinese and the Russians, just paint him as incompetent as the rest of the Pakistani leadership. Most leaders of Pakistan have used Pakistan for their own selfish reasons and Mr. Haqqani is no different. The post created a great opportunity for him to secure a good role for himself outside of Pakistan and for the reason of selling this book he had to tailor the message in a way that was more appealing to Westerners. He has obviously left out a lot because aside from a couple of anecdotes, there's nothing in this text that cannnot be found easily on the internet.
Fair play to him for getting what he needs out of it and fair play to Pakistani leaders to get out of the U.S what they needed at the time. And spare a thought for the benevolent superpower, who got fleeced by all the South Americans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Syrians, the Palestinians.... I mean I'm tearful when I think about it really.

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3 people found this helpful

paakeestaan

maybe I've been saying it wrong my whole life and he's got it right, but I've never heard anyone say Pakistan the way he does and it makes it pretty hard to listen to the book.
I always thought it was pah-kih-stan, but apparently it's actually paa kee staan.

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