cover image The Prisoner

The Prisoner

Fakhar Zaman, Faakkhr. Peter Owen Publishers, $31.95 (118pp) ISBN 978-0-7206-1010-9

Pakistani novelist Zaman's indictment of the brutal regime of General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq is not for the faint of heart. Written in Punjabi and first published in India in 1984, it graphically depicts the brutal atrocities commonplace in Pakistani prisons after Zia's military overthrew the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and dissolved the parliament of Pakistan in July 1977. The prisoner is Z, a poet and revolutionary confined to a tiny cell. The victim of a false murder charge, he's been sentenced to hang. Scenes of dancing floggers, twisting their torsos and waving their whips above their heads are both terrifying and mesmerizing. But the burra sahib (gulag superintendent) underestimates the tenacity of his prisoners. One, even after the skin has been flayed from his bones, refuses to let his jailers carry him back to his cell. Defiantly, he walks under his own power, ""with such assurance as if he had been showered not with lashes but with spring flowers."" Zaman's message is clear: freedom cannot be suppressed as long as one individual remains to resist. However, he refrains from exploring the psychology of prison life or political violence, preferring the consolations of ideology and a pose of defiant heroism. (Oct.)