36 - This Fruit Is Dynamite!: Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Guest: Roanne Kantor)

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Stanford English Professor Roanne Kantor stops by to chat with Nick about Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes.  While providing a fertile ground to discuss what exactly Global Anglophone literature is, the 2008 novel also packs many a nod to Latin America greats García Márquez and Vargas Llosa and pairs well with that other stellar work about General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and 1980s Pakistan, Salman Rushdie’s Shame. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is also hilarious, thus asking the question: Is realism or satire the correct way to address topics as unsettling as the violence and oppression of a dictator’s regime?  Either way, rest assured: The general dies in this one.