The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack

Book excerpt: The winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature follows his debut Home Boy with“an unforgettable romp across love, life, and everything else” (Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life). Abdullah, bachelor and scion of a once prominent family, awakes on the morning of his seventieth birthday and considers launching himself over the balcony. Having spent years attempting to compile a “mythopoetic legacy” of his beloved Karachi, the cosmopolitan heart of Pakistan, Abdullah has lost his zeal. A surprise invitation for a night out from his old friend Felix Pinto snaps Abdullah out of his funk and saddles him with a ward—Pinto’s adolescent grandson Bosco. As Abdullah plays mentor to Bosco, he also attracts the romantic attentions of Jugnu, an enigmatic siren with links to the mob. All the while Abdullah’s brothers’ plot to evict him from the family estate. Now he must to try to save his home—or face losing his last connection to his familial past. Anarchic, erudite, and rollicking, with a septuagenarian protagonist like no other, The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack is a joyride of a story set against a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of the world’s most vibrant cities. “H.M. Naqvi’s remarkable Cossack is the Pakistani Falstaff, the Tristram Shandy of ‘Currachee,’ spinning yarns inside yarns, allusive, affirming, and grandly comic.”—Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour “Wild, wise, and tender . . . Every page in this book is a playground, and each sentence an absolute thrill and joy to read.”—Patricia Engel, author of The Veins of the Ocean “Completely original in form and sensibility.”—Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award