Shah Meer Baloch: How representative are these “nine lives” for a diverse and complicated country such as Pakistan? As Pakistan’s home-grown Taliban rise in 2006 and 2007, more and more areas become unsafe, and the violence eventually surges into the capital, Islamabad. The writing style is fluid and you can read through the entire book in one shot without not being impressed on the detials and content.

In Chapter 9, when discussing ‘The War of the Flea’ he focuses on the Balochistan separationists and guerrilla warfare. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, an elected, civilian-led government has completed its term of office, and is about to hand power to another one.Walsh captures the heart of a country brutalised by years of military dictatorship, scarred by religious bigotry and crippled by conflicts that have left it prey to outside powers . These themes are also seen in fictional novels set in countries in this region such as works by Khaled Hosseini like The Kite Runner (2003) or A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) which have the geopolitical history of Afghanistan as their backdrop.

The subtitle of the book is Dispatches from a Divided Nation and the author criss-crosses those political, religious, ethnic and generational fault lines, assembling a portrait of the vast country of 220 million people through his travels and the lives of the nine compelling protagonists. UkraineAlert sources analysis and commentary from a wide-array of thought-leaders, politicians, experts, and activists from Ukraine and the global community. In Pakistan, and perhaps South Asia more generally, many people enjoy greater freedoms and more permissive lives than outward appearances suggest. Even a reader who doesn’t follow Pakistani politics can clearly identify the instability resulting from previous political decisions.The result is an ideal book for a reader with little or no exposure to Pakistan, who nevertheless wants to read one inclusive book that provides an accurate rendering of the fundamentals.