See here for methodology.
Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
Three Cups of Tea | Greg Mortenson | 343,984 | 12,951 |
I Am Malala | Malala Yousafzai (and Christina Lamb) | 577,732 | 6,439 |
I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition) | Malala Yousafzai | 31,704 | 2,433 |
Stones Into Schools | Greg Mortenson | 16,994 | 1,904 |
Shame | Salman Rushdie | 12,363 | 2,444 |
Well, this is a bit grim: the top book set in Pakistan among LibraryThing readers is a real White Saviour narrative about a guy who just goes and does good to the people of Paksitan, whether they want it done to them or not. I haven’t read it, and I have seen nothing about it that encourages me to do so. (And the same goes for the sequel, in eighth place on this table, which I suspect may be anyway more set in Afghanistan than Pakistan.)
Malala Yousafzai, who wins among Goodreads users, is a different matter. Although her autobiography is ghost-written by Christina Lamb, it’s a genuine insider story of life in Swat, and I think I will look out for it. It’s noticeable that the young readers’ edition comes in sixth place.
To my dismay, I need to rule out the next three books because less than 50% of each is set in Pakistan. Midnight’s Children and Exit West are both favourite books of mine, but most of Midnight’s Children is set in India and none (as far as I remember) of Exit West is set in Pakistan. Similarly, Home Fire is mostly set in England.
So the top fiction book set in Pakistan is Salman Rushdie’s Shame. I will look out for it too.
India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan