Product Description
The clock had started ticking for Sadika from the day she was born into her traditional Pakistani village family. She must be married off to somebody while she is still a teenager or she will be considered a hopeless failure.
Carefully planned marriages are a long tradition in Pakistan, as they are throughout the Middle East, where women have little social status and fewer individual rights and much of their value is measured by how good a marriage can be arranged for them.
Sadika must be married off first because she is the eldest of three daughters. It would be a disgrace–an indelible stigma–if a younger daughter was married first. The enormous tension that accompanies this ancient ritual makes Sadika’s Way at once a very funny and instructive work of fiction: we watch as mothers vie with each other on their daughters’ behalf for the affections of the most eligible males.
We see them in their homes and listen to their conversations as they boast to each other about their daughters’ qualities–real and imagined. The infighting gets intense, even downright nasty, all fed by the desperation that grows quite naturally out of a system that literally holds the fate of women in its hands.
Sadika’s coming of age and final journey to a new life involve culture clashes and family characters worthy of a modern Middle Eastern Jane Austen. This is a social comedy with serious undertones and a rare novel of manners which spans the world in both time and space.
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As an immigrant from Pakistan this book brought back many memories of times past.
The story is a tapestry woven as a fairly realistic depiction of the values and perceptions of families in some segments of Pakistan.
It portrays the effect of education in the liberation of the main female character (Sajida) within the confining constraints of the social milieu.
The treatment and the double standards for male and female offspring is depicted well except for a few exaggerated instances.
The American immigrant experience is both hilarious and endearing to readers whose experiences mirror those of the aunts family.
Great job Ms. Haq!
I hope there will be more socio-cultural novels.
Rating: 4 / 5
This novel is an earnest one, revisiting familiar themes of the backward west and the progressive American dream. It is also mediocre in terms of literary quality and stereotypically simplistic about complicated lives in both Pakistan and the U.S.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book was the best I’ve read in a really long time. The author is excellent- can’t wait till she publishes something else for me to read! She expertly weaves a story intricate with quirky, meddlesome characters, that Sadika has to combat to rise above her misfortunes. And her success is the reader’s success. The romance with Michael sweetens the book. All in all, you should definitely get this book. I loved it.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book offers a wonderful insight into travails of a woman from an oppressive, dogmatic culture into the permissive west with little support or acknowledgement of what it takes. There are many women like her who do it but it seldom occurs both to people in this country and in our home countries on the emotional adjustments and just plain ordinary courage that goes into stepping outside the bounds of one’s own culture – there are many who do it for other reasons, money being the top of the list but very few who do it for personal freedom and this book serves as a great example of highlighting what it is. That said, i wish there were few more ‘Michaels’ or white guys who propose to a courageous and yet confused, honest and modest asian woman! Sorry but there aren’t, most people stay a safe distance even with being friends and modesty is often branded as prudery or something that is not cool. Only shows that even progressive societies have a long way to go in terms of acceptance and understanding of many different ways to live.
Rating: 4 / 5
The straightforward language and sheer unpretentiousness of the book makes Sadika’s Way a buttery-smooth read. There is something intensely satisfying in following Sadika’s slow triumph and rise above the cruel family intrigue. With crusty old aunties scheme against her in the manner that old war generals orchestrate battle, the Cinderella story comparison is fairly apt.
Something of Hina Haq’s writing is Ibsen-esque, as if Nora from “A Doll’s House” was fragmented into many different individual psyches and interacting with each other in a curried dish spiked with humor. Politics is not a term relegated to only the government anymore-the illumination cast by this read on the political landscape and entangling vines of extended families is worth the read alone, among a multitude of others.
Rating: 5 / 5