Recommended by Mohsin Hamid.
A very interesting read about a very complex country. Lieven clearly lays out the complexities of family, tribal, regional and social class relations with Pakistani society. He underlines all the divisions, conflicting agendas and endgames that complicate political, social and even personal lives. He makes it abundantly clear that Pakistan is not a jihadi monolith as reported in the West, but is in fact a rich, multilayered, complex society. On top of the tribal and familial complexities you also have to lay over that eastern/middle eastern thing of the dichotomy of reality as idealized and discussed in public space vs. reality at the personal action and decision level.
This is a society and political system built on a basis completely different from Western societies. It is far more complex than our social structures - I think we would be lost if we had to try and navigate in that social and political world. Our western politicians and foreign policy must seem like bulls in a china shop to them. It is abundantly clear after reading this book that our concepts of democracy and the free market don't have much place in that social world. As concepts they may be adopted, but would become so changed in practice I don't think we would recognize them.
I suspect the same holds true for a country like Egypt.
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