The humour in Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif’s latest novel, Rebel English Academy, is disarming. Within a few pages of the beginning, you find yourself smiling and the smile stays on your face almost throughout the book. After all, the characters are quirky in their abnormal self-awareness, some of the situations make you snort with laughter (an intelligence officer with 007 on the number plate of his vehicle, for example; a woman who refers to herself as a self-made widow), and the storytelling is so smooth that you don’t even realise how quickly you’re getting through the book till you have to switch on a light. It’s only towards the end of the novel that you understand you’ve been charmed into an illusion. Rebel English Academy is not half as light-hearted as it seems. In fact, it’s a knife in the heart of any person with a conscience, particularly if she or he lives in the subcontinent.
I had no expectation of a stab to the soul when I started the book. The blurb had provided so little to go on that I believed the plot would be as thin as muslin. And certainly, the book presents more of a slice of the kind of life lived in a small town in Pakistan just after a popular prime minister was hanged, than anything else. The story begins with the transfer of an intelligence officer named Captain Gul to a small town called OK after the night of the hanging. The rest of the story takes place in OK town, where we meet Baghi, a one-time revolutionary who owns and operates the Rebel English Academy, Molly, the Maulvi, Sahiba Bano, the self-made widow, Shahid, the town photographer and a whole host of other people who don’t know it yet, but whose lives have been changed drastically by the final removal of the prime minister.
In writing the previous paragraph, I was aware that I am providing you with almost no information about the story of Rebel English Academy. That’s because it’s impossible to sum up the book in a few words. The way the characters connect with each other, the way each one relates her or his story, the absurd circumstances they find themselves in — THESE are the story. All I can tell you, really, after the pathetic piece of exposition above, is that what seems at first to be an enjoyable but forgettable book will wind up staying in your head for longer than you can imagine. (And so will the spectacularly cinematic twist in the tale just before the end.)
Rebel English Academy
Mohammed Hanif
Penguin India
pp. 309; Rs 799
