‘Racey, pacey and laugh-out-loud funny. A Murree-beer-soaked love letter to Karachi and journalism’—Mohammed Hanif
India CSR News Network
Published by Random House India, February 2014; Rs 299; Paperback
A hilarious comedy of manners in which a young reporter working in one of the world’s most dangerous cities finds that dodging bullets and bombs still isn’t as challenging as scoring a date.
Ayesha is a twenty-something reporter in one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Her assignments range from showing up at bomb sites and picking her way through scattered body parts to interviewing her boss’s niece, the couture-cupcake designer. In between dicing with death and absurdity, Ayesha despairs over the likelihood of ever meeting a nice guy, someone like her old friend Saad, whose shoulder she cries on after every romantic misadventure. Her choices seem limited to narcissistic, adrenaline-chasing reporters who’ll do anything to get their next story—to the spoilt offspring of the Karachi elite who’ll do anything to cure their boredom. Her most pressing problem, however, is how to straighten her hair during the chronic power outages.
Karachi, You’re Killing Me! is Bridget Jones’s Diary meets The Diary of a Social Butterfly—a comedy of manners in a city with none.
About the Author
Saba Imtiaz is a freelance journalist based in Karachi, Pakistan. She grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 2007 and worked for a non-profit in Jordan. She has worked at The News and The Express Tribune newspapers in Pakistan and currently contributes to a number of local and foreign publications, covering human rights, politics and religious movements.
She can be reached at http://twitter.com/saba_imtiaz and her website is http://sabaimtiaz.com.