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The Murder of Aziz Khan
First published in London in 1967, The Murder of Aziz Khan has acquired an important place in the history of English language Pakistani literature. It presents a picture of Pakistani society in its earliest years in the persons of Aziz Khan, who represents ancient and traditional values, and the Shah brothers, who are out to exploit the resources and the people of the new country for their personal gain. The story is built around this central conflict. The Shah brothers are determined to possess Aziz Khan’s land, which he refuses to sell. Intricately plotted, the story gradually unfolds, revealing the emotions of its characters; it exposes the ruthless brutality of the Shah brothers and the effects of moral corruption on them; and finally, in brilliant prose imbued with an astonishing poetic intensity, the book describes the suffering of Aziz Khan with such poignancy that it seems a symbolic vision of a wound in the heart of the new nation.
- GenresHistory
316 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1967
33 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Zulfikar Ghose
43 books36 followersZulfikar Ghose (born in Sialkot, India (now Pakistan) on March 13, 1935) is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism.
He became a close friend of British experimental writer B. S. Johnson, with whom he collaborated on several projects, and of Anthony Smith. The three writers met when they served as joint editors of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. Ghose also met English poet Ted Hughes and his wife, the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and American author Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated.
While teaching and writing in London from 1963–1969, Ghose also free-lanced as a sports journalist, reporting on cricket for The Observer newspaper. Two collections of his poetry were published, The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). The Contradictions explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life.
He became a close friend of British experimental writer B. S. Johnson, with whom he collaborated on several projects, and of Anthony Smith. The three writers met when they served as joint editors of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. Ghose also met English poet Ted Hughes and his wife, the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and American author Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated.
While teaching and writing in London from 1963–1969, Ghose also free-lanced as a sports journalist, reporting on cricket for The Observer newspaper. Two collections of his poetry were published, The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). The Contradictions explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 4, 2017
The story rises at page 117 only to nose dive twenty pages later, never getting up from the author-ordained rubble of hard-to-believe dramatic tropes.
Though the general corruption and moral malaise that the book speaks of may be true, the culture of Punjab (or any agricultural land) - steeped in tradition, superstition and togetherness - is missing. Aziz Khan, the owner of 70 acres, is written as such a sleepy head / pessimist / defeatist / lazy bum, you wonder how he ever got these fields in the first place. He is not a man of action, the world or soil though the author tries very hard to give him a soul - pages and pages detail his connection to mother earth. He is a dumbo, his sons, Rafiq and Javed, are complete dumbos too. None of them knows anything about power politics, police and thaana culture, jirga or court system; they have zero friends, no communication with anyone else except labor talk or customary letter from Zuleikha in Karachi. This is not the way village people are. Period.
After the horror of what happens to older brother Rafiq, Javed - the heir and only remaining son of a prized property - goes to work on assembly line of his father’s rivals! Who does that in real life? Would owner of an empire go and do a measly 50 rupee a month factory job? A Pakistani would rather own a roadside khokha and be his own master than do a 9-5 job. Why would such a young man jeopardize his life and liberty by getting involved in petty union politics that have nothing to do with him or his land? Why would he think that hanging around the packaging line made him closer to Shah brothers and brother’s murder? Why would such a man trust Hussain - the broker / back stabber / up to no good ever - for money? In fact, why would Aziz Khan need money and seek loans from suspicious people? Wouldn’t a landlord be more cautious?
If the Akram+Ayub industrial complex wanted a route from the land, they could have asked for it and most probably would have been granted it too - the cultivated land would continue to grow crops and the road would continue to be a road. Anyways, evil arrogant people usually want all or nothing and people have done worse for far less.
Aziz Khan, owner of 70 acres of agricultural land in Pakistani side of Punjab - somewhere between Lahore and Rawalpindi - speaks urdu, and is shown as an urdu-speaking landowner in Punjab? Is he? At least that's the way he appeared to me (Ayub also remarked that he speaks urdu - was that a condescension or factoid?). Caste unknown. The reality of the land in which this story is set - Punjab - is that it had large land-owning families (how they got this land is another story). The official letters were written in urdu though spoken languages were punjabi dialects. Around 1900s the British government gave incentives to middle-class castes, who were mainly Hindu and Sikh, to cultivate and own 25+ acres, small areas. They did. But these men and their families left around partition and the said land became the property of Muslim feudals. I have read two Urdu-language books 'Punjab Mein Baradariyon Ki Siyasat - 1947-2002' by Zahoor Ahmed Chaudhary (2013) and 'Pakistan Kay Siyasi Waderay' by Aqeel Ahmed Jafri (2011) and it doesn’t sound like anyone was recognized as an urdu-speaking landowning class in these parts. So setting up a home-grown urdu-speaking land owner in Pakistani side of Punjab (in a 'rural agricultural town') at time of partition is kind of strange, especially since this guy never travelled beyond the 70-acres (just went to Lahore as a kid) - where he and his wife got an education is left up in the air.
One of the bad evil men in the story - trio of brothers from Bombay - who would technically be Sindhi Mohajir (caste unknown) - identifies himself as a Punjabi when he only came to Punjab three years ago, for business, for setting up industry. In a country where people give long ancestral histories and caste bio datas to show their superiority or persecution, this is another piece of maladjusted fiction.
Also, hard to believe is the meteoric rise of Shah brothers from having a few thousands to Akram's name in 1947 Bombay, to owning most of a rural town and two textile mills by 1953 in 'West Punjab' (a province consisting of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Sargodha, that lasted till 1955, when the whole of West Pakistan got rebranded as a single province) - and they have active plans for soap / cosmetics industries in Bengal and Karachi. Also, usually people follow a predictable line of business expansion too for e.g. a butter-maker will generate milk, yogurt, ghee, oil. They didn't. Also, how were they able to grab land in that area (between Lahore and pindi) without involvement / approval of some military officer, apart from the requisite minister and commissioner?
I also could not fathom how the youngest brother Afaq could be so careless and thankless towards his brothers, considering that they had been working hard for 20 years to provide for him and four sisters, living in a joint family system in two rooms above a restaurant on Mohammad Ali Road, and he owed them all his good fortune.
Memorable lines:
- Though her rounded figure was sometimes difficult to manoeuver through a crowded dance floor, Akram, weighing his wife’s bulk against the public relations value of a show of connubial faithfulness, thought that five minutes of looking over her shoulder was perhaps a worthwhile investment for the good of his public name.
- fraternal homosexuality
- The love which the Hollywood films portrayed had been beyond her comprehension: oh she had had longings during her youth but those she considered now to be an artificiality to which young girls in Pakistan, unable to have relations with the opposite sex which were permitted in western societies, were painfully exposed.
- ‘At your service,’ Elahi said.
‘Allah will reward you,’ Ayub said.
‘Thank you,’ Ayub said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Come and collect it tomorrow,’ Ayub said.
- The Muslim adage, What had to happen has happened, was constantly on his lips, and he sat in the front yard, a monument to Islam’s defeatist fatalism.
- Razvi had no way of distinguishing the tablets except the impossible one of licking each tablet to discover the bitterer; he had, therefore, mixed the two lots, convinced that if he prescribed two tablets every three hours for twenty-four hours, then there was statistically a good chance of equal quantities of quinine and aspirin being administered.
- the Bismillah with which a devout Muslim commences any activity - from eating a meal to dropping a bomb on an enemy.
- Though she had expected no words, for all the poetry she had known had come from his hands. As from her, too, the only tangible expression of love had been a well-cooked meal.
- Some people are born just to rot away on the land.
- Did he believe in the next world? Islam, the ritual turning towards Mecca five times a day, the stoical tolerance of poverty and disease in the expectation of a paradise, the endless ablutions and prayers, the fasting and the sacrifice, Islam, the tyrant of Pakistan which compelled a people’s slavery. He had had nothing to do with it except superficially.........How long would Pakistanis continue to deceive themselves that Allah was a substitute for learning?
Though the general corruption and moral malaise that the book speaks of may be true, the culture of Punjab (or any agricultural land) - steeped in tradition, superstition and togetherness - is missing. Aziz Khan, the owner of 70 acres, is written as such a sleepy head / pessimist / defeatist / lazy bum, you wonder how he ever got these fields in the first place. He is not a man of action, the world or soil though the author tries very hard to give him a soul - pages and pages detail his connection to mother earth. He is a dumbo, his sons, Rafiq and Javed, are complete dumbos too. None of them knows anything about power politics, police and thaana culture, jirga or court system; they have zero friends, no communication with anyone else except labor talk or customary letter from Zuleikha in Karachi. This is not the way village people are. Period.
After the horror of what happens to older brother Rafiq, Javed - the heir and only remaining son of a prized property - goes to work on assembly line of his father’s rivals! Who does that in real life? Would owner of an empire go and do a measly 50 rupee a month factory job? A Pakistani would rather own a roadside khokha and be his own master than do a 9-5 job. Why would such a young man jeopardize his life and liberty by getting involved in petty union politics that have nothing to do with him or his land? Why would he think that hanging around the packaging line made him closer to Shah brothers and brother’s murder? Why would such a man trust Hussain - the broker / back stabber / up to no good ever - for money? In fact, why would Aziz Khan need money and seek loans from suspicious people? Wouldn’t a landlord be more cautious?
If the Akram+Ayub industrial complex wanted a route from the land, they could have asked for it and most probably would have been granted it too - the cultivated land would continue to grow crops and the road would continue to be a road. Anyways, evil arrogant people usually want all or nothing and people have done worse for far less.
Aziz Khan, owner of 70 acres of agricultural land in Pakistani side of Punjab - somewhere between Lahore and Rawalpindi - speaks urdu, and is shown as an urdu-speaking landowner in Punjab? Is he? At least that's the way he appeared to me (Ayub also remarked that he speaks urdu - was that a condescension or factoid?). Caste unknown. The reality of the land in which this story is set - Punjab - is that it had large land-owning families (how they got this land is another story). The official letters were written in urdu though spoken languages were punjabi dialects. Around 1900s the British government gave incentives to middle-class castes, who were mainly Hindu and Sikh, to cultivate and own 25+ acres, small areas. They did. But these men and their families left around partition and the said land became the property of Muslim feudals. I have read two Urdu-language books 'Punjab Mein Baradariyon Ki Siyasat - 1947-2002' by Zahoor Ahmed Chaudhary (2013) and 'Pakistan Kay Siyasi Waderay' by Aqeel Ahmed Jafri (2011) and it doesn’t sound like anyone was recognized as an urdu-speaking landowning class in these parts. So setting up a home-grown urdu-speaking land owner in Pakistani side of Punjab (in a 'rural agricultural town') at time of partition is kind of strange, especially since this guy never travelled beyond the 70-acres (just went to Lahore as a kid) - where he and his wife got an education is left up in the air.
One of the bad evil men in the story - trio of brothers from Bombay - who would technically be Sindhi Mohajir (caste unknown) - identifies himself as a Punjabi when he only came to Punjab three years ago, for business, for setting up industry. In a country where people give long ancestral histories and caste bio datas to show their superiority or persecution, this is another piece of maladjusted fiction.
Also, hard to believe is the meteoric rise of Shah brothers from having a few thousands to Akram's name in 1947 Bombay, to owning most of a rural town and two textile mills by 1953 in 'West Punjab' (a province consisting of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Sargodha, that lasted till 1955, when the whole of West Pakistan got rebranded as a single province) - and they have active plans for soap / cosmetics industries in Bengal and Karachi. Also, usually people follow a predictable line of business expansion too for e.g. a butter-maker will generate milk, yogurt, ghee, oil. They didn't. Also, how were they able to grab land in that area (between Lahore and pindi) without involvement / approval of some military officer, apart from the requisite minister and commissioner?
I also could not fathom how the youngest brother Afaq could be so careless and thankless towards his brothers, considering that they had been working hard for 20 years to provide for him and four sisters, living in a joint family system in two rooms above a restaurant on Mohammad Ali Road, and he owed them all his good fortune.
Memorable lines:
- Though her rounded figure was sometimes difficult to manoeuver through a crowded dance floor, Akram, weighing his wife’s bulk against the public relations value of a show of connubial faithfulness, thought that five minutes of looking over her shoulder was perhaps a worthwhile investment for the good of his public name.
- fraternal homosexuality
- The love which the Hollywood films portrayed had been beyond her comprehension: oh she had had longings during her youth but those she considered now to be an artificiality to which young girls in Pakistan, unable to have relations with the opposite sex which were permitted in western societies, were painfully exposed.
- ‘At your service,’ Elahi said.
‘Allah will reward you,’ Ayub said.
‘Thank you,’ Ayub said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Come and collect it tomorrow,’ Ayub said.
- The Muslim adage, What had to happen has happened, was constantly on his lips, and he sat in the front yard, a monument to Islam’s defeatist fatalism.
- Razvi had no way of distinguishing the tablets except the impossible one of licking each tablet to discover the bitterer; he had, therefore, mixed the two lots, convinced that if he prescribed two tablets every three hours for twenty-four hours, then there was statistically a good chance of equal quantities of quinine and aspirin being administered.
- the Bismillah with which a devout Muslim commences any activity - from eating a meal to dropping a bomb on an enemy.
- Though she had expected no words, for all the poetry she had known had come from his hands. As from her, too, the only tangible expression of love had been a well-cooked meal.
- Some people are born just to rot away on the land.
- Did he believe in the next world? Islam, the ritual turning towards Mecca five times a day, the stoical tolerance of poverty and disease in the expectation of a paradise, the endless ablutions and prayers, the fasting and the sacrifice, Islam, the tyrant of Pakistan which compelled a people’s slavery. He had had nothing to do with it except superficially.........How long would Pakistanis continue to deceive themselves that Allah was a substitute for learning?
May 11, 2016
It's very Pakistani story of exploitation set in rural Punjab. The plot is while simple managed to surprise me with a number of twists and turns right till the end. Pakistani culture is very family oriented and the author managed to represent with ease. The destruction of anything and everything threatening the progress of the family is a very common nature in the Pakistani culture. Therefore the family has developed as an institution as opposed to the rise of the individual in the West.
The dialogue is very real and powerful and the novel gives a valuable insight into the rural culture of Punjab before the 1971 partition of Pakistan. Aziz Khan represents the ravaged land of rural Punjab while the ruthless Shah brothers are its tormentors.
The dialogue is very real and powerful and the novel gives a valuable insight into the rural culture of Punjab before the 1971 partition of Pakistan. Aziz Khan represents the ravaged land of rural Punjab while the ruthless Shah brothers are its tormentors.
May 28, 2019
i read this book but unfortunately i didn't get it .what writer wants to say . is it about landlord, industrialists or about story of afaq and razia.
somewhere i thought this book showed contrasts between two societies. how the upper class manage to buy police,. but i think aziz khan was not lower class guy. he was landlord of 70 acers.why didn't he raise for hi rights. he was a landlord from centuries why he didn't make much contacts . why he was so dumb as his sons too. they had just contact with zulaikha.
after the murderer of his that industry brother how javed can work in their industry.
the thing about hakeem is still happening know in villages and this is awful about zarina?her character showed in whole novel to show akram was not pious person . but positive thing about this novel is that is shows the love of a farmer for his land and obedience of a son for their parent although they were illiterate.
somewhere i thought this book showed contrasts between two societies. how the upper class manage to buy police,. but i think aziz khan was not lower class guy. he was landlord of 70 acers.why didn't he raise for hi rights. he was a landlord from centuries why he didn't make much contacts . why he was so dumb as his sons too. they had just contact with zulaikha.
after the murderer of his that industry brother how javed can work in their industry.
the thing about hakeem is still happening know in villages and this is awful about zarina?her character showed in whole novel to show akram was not pious person . but positive thing about this novel is that is shows the love of a farmer for his land and obedience of a son for their parent although they were illiterate.
June 16, 2022
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October 27, 2024
Realistic portrayal of contemporary Pakistani capitalistic society that is captured by a handful of elite. And exploitation of the middle class at the hands of those corrupt moguls.
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March 2, 2017Good
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December 24, 2014Zulfiqar ghose has blended fantasy and realism in a magical way.
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September 1, 2016hbhibjhbh
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews