Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Fear & loathing in Bhutto’s land


Blood, sword and suffering are the heartbeat of Fatima Bhutto’s literary soul. And it was fear that propelled her poetry, says the heir to Pakistan’s tragedy-scarred Bhutto family. An accomplished poet, Fatima, 29, captures love, loss and the solitude of her circumstances in her verses.

“I have not written poetry for a very long time, but poetry like prose is ultimately a means of expressing what seems difficult otherwise,” Fatima, who will be in India for the Kovalam Literary Festival (October 1-2), said in an email interview from Karachi.

“Kovalam will be my first visit to south India. And I’m looking forward to seeing more of the country and interacting with new audiences and opening bridges between our cities and stories.”

She won’t be reading out just from her poetry. Fatima has authored Whispers of the Desert, an anthology of poetry, as well as 08.50 am, an account of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and Songs of Blood and Sword, a searing document of the turbulence that had ripped her family apart on her native turf.

Born in 1982 in Kabul to Murtaza Bhutto, the son of former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Fatima carries the illustrious and violent lineage on her young shoulders. Her grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged to death in 1979. In 1996, Fatima’s father Murtaza was gunned down in Karachi by the police during the tenure of “aunt” Benazir Bhutto. Eleven years later, Benazir Bhutto met with a similar fate in Rawalpindi in 2007 when she was shot dead at a rally.

Full report here Asian Age

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