Our Lady of Alice Bhatti - Hardcover

Hanif, Mohammed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224082051 ISBN 13: 9780224082051

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2011

Synopsis

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments are looking for a miracle, and Alice Bhatti is looking for a job.

Alice is a candidate for the position of junior nurse, grade 4. It is only a few weeks since her release from Borstal. She has returned to her childhood home in the French Colony, where her father, recently retired from his position as chief janitor, continues as part-time healer, and full-time headache for the local church. It seems she has inherited some of his gift.With guidance from the working nurse's manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice brings succour to the thousands of patients littering the hospital's corridors and concrete courtyard. In the process she attracts the attention of a lovesick patient, Teddy Bunt, apprentice to the nefarious 'Gentleman Squad' of the Karachi police. They fall in love; Teddy with sudden violence, Alice with cautious optimism.Their love is unexpected, but the consequences are not.

Alice soon finds that her new life is built on foundations as unstable as those of her home. A Catholic snubbed by other Catholics, who are in turn hated by everyone around them, she is also put at risk by her husband, who does two things that no member of the Gentlemen Squad has ever done - fall in love with a working girl, and allow a potentially dangerous suspect to get away. Can Teddy and Alice ever live in peace? Can two people make a life together without destroying the very thing that united them? It seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse...

Filled with wit, colour and pathos, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a glorious story of second chances, thwarted ambitions and love in unlikely places, set in the febrile streets of downtown Karachi. It is the remarkable new novel from the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

About this title

Review:

`his vivid prose has tremendous Immediacy' --Daily Mail

...The prose attains the heights of poetry...Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is profoundly humane, and humanist. --The Guardian

Rambunctious, vulgar, funny and moving, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti wields enormous emotional punch --Time Magazine

This very finely put-together novel sparkles and glitters but never shows off. --The Guardian

`Hanif's storytelling is frequently impressive... touching and unusual' --Literary Review, Faith Brinkley

'Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tragicomedy of Shakespearean proportions' --Time Out, Rachel Platt

'I am so gripped by what the book is trying to tell me that I cannot put it down' --Spectator, Melissa Kite

'The wry narrative refreshingly resists all manner of stereotypes and flowery sentimentality' --The Independent, Iman Qureshi

'The writing is superbly witty and assured' --The Times, Kate Saunders

Book Description:

The glorious new novel from the author of the internationally acclaimed, bestselling A Case of Exploding Mangoes

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0224082051
• ISBN 13: 9780224082051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240