Over the Rainbow

by Paul Pickering

It is September 2009, Ramadan and the eve of Afghanistan's first 'democratic' elections when young American Malone, pilot for an aid airline, does Fatima Hamza the favour of flying her out of Kabul to Bamiyan, while his surgeon wife Kim heads south to Kandahar. The beguiling, Oxford-educated Pashtun Fatima has left Pakistan to rediscover the country she comes from, she tells him, to retrace the places that were important to her spy-chief father, ex-military man and writer with a disturbing gift of prophecy. For both Kim and Malone, the foray into that dangerous territory is to become a prolonged adventure, their former lives receding as they lose touch with one another and enter the world of the enemy. Each is to witness the horror of an air raid, and each is to come face-to-face with the Taliban. They will glimpse hell, but paradise, too, and be changed.In this powerful novel, Paul Pickering gives a human face to the conflict in Afghanistan, capturing the magical quality of a land and its people.

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Paul Pickering is the author of seven novels, Wild About Harry, Perfect English, The Blue Gate of Babylon, Charlie Peace, The Leopard’s Wife, Over the Rainbow and Elephant. The Blue Gate of Babylon was a New York Times notable book of the year, who dubbed it ‘superior literature’. Often compared to Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Pickering was chosen as one of the top ten young British novelists by bookseller WH Smith and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize three times. Educated at the Royal Masonic Schools and the University of Leicester, he has a PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, presented his doctoral thesis to the Bulgakov Society in Moscow, recently completed a Hawthornden Fellowship Residency on Lake Como and is a member of the Folio Prize Academy. The novelist J.G. Ballard said Pickering’s work is ‘truly subversive’. As well as short stories and poetry, he has written plays, film scripts and columns for The Times and Sunday Times. He lives in London and the Pyrenees.

Reviews

[Matti · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh what a mess!
A tourist guide to an exotic hell, adolescent erotic fantasies, contrived pseudophilosophical and would-be moral dilemmas, gruesome violence with no sense (I mean no narrative sense - gruesome violence is always without real sense), frustratingly plastic characters who can't turn their so-called passions into any action other than reaction. The only character with any promise is the goose, and even he doesn't get to develop into anything but a metaphor. An attempt at "magical realism" that doesn't work. The Wizard of Oz theme is thinned into the title refrain, it doesn't find any real resonance.

I really hope Paul Pickering would put his scene-description talents into better use.

[Oliver St · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get between the covers of this powerful novel. You will not regret it. It goes to the heart of Afghanistan and the human condition. A moving and unsettling literary read. Malone and Fatima are wonderful characters and their journey is one you will not forget. I love the use of the absurd on the quest, especially the goose called Toto, to bring out the human side of the war in Afghanistan and turn much of what we imagine about the country on its head. The book is both subversive and seductive. Love breaks down the barriers of war as an American aid pilot falls in love with a spy chief's daughter. The American's surgeon wife than falls for one of her captors after she has been taken prisoner. The story is exciting but poignant as Malone, the pilot, and his wife Kim are drawn apart and changed in a baffling and magical land. The writing is beautiful and the description exquisite and by the end of the book I felt I had been there myself. In Toto tip top!

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was alternatively enthralling, educational, and an effort to continue reading. It is the story of an American couple in Kabul, he as aid pilot and she a medical professional. This is the story of how they go on their separate missions, become involved with the Taliban and other dangers. They become disconnected and lose touch completely as they have their own struggles in this unforgiving land.

[Leslea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sugarpop 2018 Reading Challenge - read a book with song lyrics in the title.
Not a bad book - set in Afganhistan, about a pilot and his doctor wife and their lives. The pilot meets a beautiful woman who wants to be flown into Taliban territory. Tragedy strikes all three and lives change forever.

[Jane Gilman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected to enjoy this novel much more than I did it has had some excellent reviews and in places it is excellent but I found it really difficult to engage with the characters.
Malone and his wife Kim are in Afghanistan working for an N.G.O. Following a bizarre incident involving a goose and "The Wizard of Oz" Malone becomes infatuated with Fatima Hamza and agrees to fly her out of Kabul to Bamiyan. Meanwhile Kim is to travel south to Kandahar.
What follows are meetings with the Taliban. Kim's traveling companion is killed and Kim is taken prisoner. Malone and Fatima have many adventures and here is where the great themes of the novel are explored.
Nothing is what it seems in Afghanistan though it is difficult to believe that anyone could be as naive as these two. This is what is frustrating about this novel. Once the action starts there are wonderful gut wrenching descriptions of air raids. Very poignant treatment of over powering love and the moral dilemma of who is my enemy. Magnificent lyrical passages describing the crossing of the high passes and the terrible danger of The Silk Route. Parts of this novel are brilliant and deserve every plaudit but for me the devices used to get the characters into place and the characters themselves left me feeling frustrated I was annoyed by them and that left this novel teetering on the edge of greatness. Rather like crossing the frontier itself.

[Stefan Frischauf · Rating 5 out of 5]

"After returning to the West from Afghanistan nothing can be the way it was before" - that used to be my quintessence after having worked and lived there for 1 1/2 years. You have to experience that country - to love and to hate - to fear it and to try to get over your fears. "People are strange, when you're a stranger" - that way you have to build up trust and faith with these deeply spiritual people, who love their freedom more than anything else.
"The graveyard of superpowers" - "The battlefield of wrecked ideologies" - Paul Pickering shows all that ambivalence of Afghanistan and its people in this great work of fiction. The country's deep truths lie far beyond any Western concept of "Rationalism".
But - seriously - after 911 and everything that followed during these first years of the 21st century - who still doesn't see the cracks in the thin facade of Western "business as usual" - pretending to be able to "explain the world" will also be alienated by Paul Pickering's story - and its deep message.

[Yvann S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre story set in Afghanistan now (i.e with war and chaos); Malone and his wife are young aid workers. Malone meets and is captivated by Fatima, Oxford-educated daughter of the former head of Pakistan intelligence services. When she films a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and it is leaked, she and Malone have to go on the run - and what's Kim up to in Kandahar.

This felt like it was written on an acid trip. On the one hand, the portrayal of aid worker life in Afghanistan is interesting, gritty, bleak but appears well researched; on the other hand, filming a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow in downtown bombed-out Kabul? Everything in which Fatima was involved was incredible. The whirlwind romance between Malone and Kim and the fundamentalist religious aspect of their marriage didn't really make a lot of sense either.

[Juliana Jura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept of a woman with Afghan roots returning alone from her family home in Pakistan where the Muslim religion is sacred and where women are treated as subservient citizens, I found it hard to believe that this one would a) enter a dangerous country as a lone female and b) make a home movie based on the 'Wizard of Oz'! Some of the peripheral material in the book had the potential to be very interesting as a story line and made up for the deficit in the main tale of the book.