SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM.
Here's something to do this week that fits your recession-budget (as in, it's free) while keeping you in touch with the topical world (can you say Pakistan?). American/Pakistani author Daniyal Mueenuddin is in the midst of his first ever U.S. book tour and he's got five readings in San Francisco and environs in the next week.
I first saw his story Nawabdin Electrician in the New Yorker -- apparently Salman Rushdie did, too, because he selected it for Best American Short Stories 2008. It was the kind of writing that took me a page or two to get into, in the way that unfamiliar settings, like the Pakistani dessert, and names you're not sure how to pronounce (just like in those old Russian novels) can create enough cognitive dissonace that your brain resists sinking into the actual narrative. But I'm glad I fought through, because the writing has a lot of sly humor and the characters are unpredictable and unforgettable. In this story, there's Nawab, a crafty old electrician who has "a signature ability: a technique for cheating the electric company by slowing down the revolutions of its meters, so cunningly performed that his customers could specify to the hundred-rupee note the desired monthly savings." This makes him especially popular with an upper class estate owner, K.K. Harouni, who agrees to get Nawab a motorcycle for his years of service. One night on that motorcycle, the electrician stops to help a stranger on the side of the road and....well, as in all good stories, something goes terribly, terribly wrong. How Nawab reacts makes for a truly jaw-dropping ending...one that sent me looking for more of the author's work.
Mueennuddin's stories -- eight in all -- have been published now under the title In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. The book, his first, is a story cycle -- each story stands on its own, but together, through interconnected characters and settings, they make up a complete whole. In this case, the connection is Harouni, the landowner; his relatives, associates, servants, and so on, each get their moment in the spotlight, creating a mosaic portrait up and down the levels of Pakistani society. I've now read three of the stories, including the title story, in which the corrupt old Harouni takes a young cousin as a mistress, and we watch from her point of view as she adjusts to this role that she never asked for but is determined to make the most of.
The 45-year old author has a Pakistani father and an American mother and has spent his life going back and forth between both countries -- he used to practice law in New York; now he runs a mango farm in Pakistan. The collection is making a big splash -- he's in the top ten on Amazon, is talking to the Wall Street Journal about his cross-cultural biography, and is interviewed by Beatrice about his favorite Turgenev short story.
You can catch Mueenuddin (pronounced Mwen-o-Dean) at City Lights in San Francisco on Wednesday, Feb. 25, followed by readings in Danville, Corte Madera and Berkeley; later he hits Pasadena, Portland, Seattle, and NYC.
UPDATE: I'm planning to check out his reading on Sunday, March 1, at 3:00 at 1:00 in the afternoon, in Oakland at Diesel Books on College Ave. Look for me there.
