Book Condition: Very Good, very minimal signs of shelf wear and handling, otherwise clean, clear text in tightly bound copy. What is astonishing about this novel is that many of its characters are real; a few of its important characters were alive until a decade ago, but have since departed. Also, many of the incidents and events narrated in this novel actually happened, and so those are based on fact; but the author has chosen to interpret these actions and events with humor, and painted them with unabashed sarcasm, and colored them with prodigious wit, and thereby he has transformed the grave incidents into very funny vignettes. At the center of the novel is the death of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who was president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. On August 17, 1988, a C-130 Hercules plane carrying Zia ul-Haq crashes. On board were several Pakistani army generals, Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan, and all of them perish. They were returning to Islamabad from Punjab, where they had been to witness a tank demonstration. A few crates of ripe mangoes were loaded onto the plane before take off. Did one of the crates contain a canister of poison gas? The author wonders. The main narrator of the novel is Ali Shigri, an Air Force Junior Officer, in the Pakistani Military. Ali Shigri's father, Col. Quili Shigri, has committed suicide, but Ali is convinced that his father did not commit suicide, and that he was actually murdered by General Zia. And so quite determined to kill the general, Ali hatches an elaborate plan to carry it. Intrigue and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy trying its damnedest to happen. Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide.Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators, including his cologne-bathed roommate, a hash-smoking American lieutenant, and a mango-besotted crow, Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is a wonderful book and it will definitely keep you reading, and, yes indeed, there was a real belief that the CIA had spiked mangoes that went on board the plane with VX gas to eliminate Zia.
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