In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Pakistani writer Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a collection of eight connected short stories, centers around Pakistani feudal grounds overseen by ageing landowner K. K. Harouni. Beginning with the electrician Nawabdin whose motorcycle—which he'd manipulated Harouni into buying—gets stolen, Mueenuddin's characters are compelled by their desperate circumstances to wheel and deal simply to survive. Social class liberates no one. A poor servant girl seduces a wealthier man in order to get her hands on his son's baby; later that man schemes for his son be elected to public office in exchange for a lifetime of party loyalty. In nearly every story, strings are pulled and favors are called in, but whatever happiness the negotiations yield is temporary and precarious—there 's always someone equally self-interested and wily on the other end of the string. As Mueenuddin's schemers negotiate the social terrain through manipulation, so too does the author negotiate a rocky emotional landscape, establishing then counteracting empathy or disdain for his characters. There are no romanticized victims or heroes, only complex characters clawing for a grip on the elusive wonder of happiness, which in Mueenuddin's stories always lies in the other room, the other person, the other social class, the other life. The result is a panorama of misery devoid of levity but thorough in its portrayal of the complexities of feudal Pakistan.