Pakistani media spitting blood on memoir expected: Fatima

ISLAMABAD - Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, says the country’s media is “spitting blood” over her memoir on the Bhutto clan but this is “to be expected”.

“Thank you Marvi, I’m pleased you’re reading the book. PK media is spitting blood over it - which is to be expected…” she tweeted to Pakistani politician Marvi Memon on the micro-blogging site.

“BEST NEWS OF ALL? Songs of Blood and Sword is the number 1 non fiction book in India. Thank you India,” she said in another tweet.

And, in a riposte to her critics in Pakistan, Fatima tweeted: “Songs of Blood and Sword outsells Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah in PK, but has yet to overtake Mush’s book. Only in Pakistan….”

However, at least one leading Pakistani has welcomed the memoir even as he has pointed to “some glaring half-truths” in the work.

“The much-awaited book by Murtaza Bhutto’s daughter, Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword, is selling well, especially among the writer’s main fan-base, i.e. the offspring of the class of people who were at the forefront of labelling her grandfather (Z.A. Bhutto) as a monster,” Nadeem F. Paracha wrote in his Smokers’ Corner in Dawn, headlined “Dad who would be king”.

“As expected, the book is a passionate argument against whatever her controversial father had been accused of, and, of course, this being Fatima Bhutto, she makes sure to every now and then ridicule her aunt, Benazir Bhutto, who, as a character in the book, is always lurking somewhere behind, manipulating, sulking and having a ‘split personality’.

“The book is a touching document of a sensitive daughter remembering her father. But at the same time it is frequently punctuated with some glaring half-truths,” Paracha wrote.

“Songs of Blood and Sword”, which was released in India earlier this month dominated the non-fiction list in the week just gone by.