Karachi Vice
Life and Death in a Contested City
-
- 17,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Pakistan's largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people. A place of political turbulence, where lavish wealth and absolute poverty sit side by side, and where the lines between idealism and corruption can quickly blur.
Through the stories of those who know the city best - including a journalist, an activist, and an ambulance driver - Samira Shackle paints a vivid, vibrant and often violent portrait of Karachi over the past decade: a period during which the Taliban arrived in Pakistan, adding to the daily perils of its residents and pushing their city into the international spotlight. Nuanced and fast-paced, Karachi Vice is an immersive, electrifying journey around one of the most compelling cities in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Shackle debuts with an evocative portrait of Karachi's political, ethnic, and criminal conflicts. In the 70 years since the partition of India, the population of Pakistan's largest city has grown from 500,000 to 20 million, a staggering rate of expansion that has left vast sections of the city dependent on mafia groups to provide basic services such as water and electricity. Meanwhile, the waves of migration that have fueled Karachi's growth have also given rise to "noxious ethnic political movements" that intimidate opponents through violence. Shackle centers her narrative on five Karachiites, including a street school teacher who varies her route to her small rooftop classroom to avoid gangs, a local crime reporter who chases down leads on police executions, and an ambulance driver who navigates the city's alleyways to aid those injured in street battles and bombings. Shackle's profiles touch on traumas in the city's recent history, in particular the 2014 terrorist attack on the Jinnah International Airport and ensuing military and police crackdown, while also revealing Karachi's "gravitational pull" on Pakistan and the world. Vivid prose and Shackle's skillful balancing of the personal and the political make this a worthy introduction to a complex metropolis.
