Comedy in a Country on Fire

Mohammed Hanif’s incendiary comic novel, Rebel English Academy, makes strong demands on American readers — and rewards them. Among its many pleasures is the refreshing, if disorienting, sense of landing in an unfamiliar place: a provincial town two hours outside Lahore, Pakistan. It’s a world untraveled by most Westerners and untrammeled by the sentimental gaze of PBS costume dramas. In these pages, Hanif’s satirical wit sears a political history many of us remember only dimly — and he couldn’t care less about making any concessions for Western comfort.