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"A fascinating ethnography with Bollywood flair, even at its darkest moments."--Washington Post
Product Description
The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it.
Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
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First Sentence
Lahore is a wonderful city with rich character and a worn charm. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Lahore is a wonderful city with rich character and a worn charm. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book gives an incredible insight into the lives of the prostitutes that inhabit the red light district of Lahore. The author, an anthropologist from Birmingham University regularly visited the district over a period of five years and we follow the trials and tribulations on the characters she meets.
Ironically, Heera Mendi is one of the few places in Pakistan where people prefer girl babies, for the fact that they will bring in an income. Maha, the women the author befriends is fortunate in this respect as she has four daughters and the second eldest is somewhat of a beauty. We witness her daughters entering the trade and the virginity being sold off to the highest buyer. Startling however is that despite the obvious intelligence of many of the girls involved there seem few that have the belief that it's possible to break the vicious cycle of the daughter of a prostitute becoming a prostitute herself. A large part of the blame can have be placed on the society they inhabit.
Louise Brown writes without judgment, though even at times she is unable to maintain her professional distance and (very understandably) intervenes. Aside from the tales of the prostitutes there are also insightful passages where she talks about the hijab and describes the religious rituals of the area. The book is incredibly easy too read (though admittedly the short chapters were a little annoying) and its main fault is that often we are left wanting more information. However it still is worth 5 stars in my opinion and a must read for anybody interested in the fate of `working' women or society in Pakistan.
Ironically, Heera Mendi is one of the few places in Pakistan where people prefer girl babies, for the fact that they will bring in an income. Maha, the women the author befriends is fortunate in this respect as she has four daughters and the second eldest is somewhat of a beauty. We witness her daughters entering the trade and the virginity being sold off to the highest buyer. Startling however is that despite the obvious intelligence of many of the girls involved there seem few that have the belief that it's possible to break the vicious cycle of the daughter of a prostitute becoming a prostitute herself. A large part of the blame can have be placed on the society they inhabit.
Louise Brown writes without judgment, though even at times she is unable to maintain her professional distance and (very understandably) intervenes. Aside from the tales of the prostitutes there are also insightful passages where she talks about the hijab and describes the religious rituals of the area. The book is incredibly easy too read (though admittedly the short chapters were a little annoying) and its main fault is that often we are left wanting more information. However it still is worth 5 stars in my opinion and a must read for anybody interested in the fate of `working' women or society in Pakistan.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a documentary of an English academic's time spent in Hira Mandi (Diamond city), the brothel area of Lahore. It spans over a period of about 5 years and focuses on the different characters which Brown encounters. However, it is mainly about one family who through Brown we get to know. The family consist of a beautiful mother who is no longer young enough to be a courtesan/prostitute, and her three daughters who are barely teenagers so at the prime age to start their careers.
Set in Pakistan it shows you the sordid and unpleasant realities of life in the brothel town of an Islamic country. Yet it has a sense of optimism or practicality about it. The characters are trapped by their positions and therefore you see them desiring more yet the class and religious restritions they are bound by mean they can never move up in society.
There are moments of pure hilarity in this book (the melodramatic antics of Maha) and moments where you think 'this is so sad', and it's this balance which makes you care for the characters and want to find out more about them. You also gain a sense of Brown's own frustrations at the thinking of these Pakistani women, for example when they call one another 'whore' yet this is the very thing which they find insulting in turn, or when they pity Brown for being a single woman.
It is a documentary which absorbs you fully into the slums of Hira Mandi and at the end I found myself wondering what happens next...
A lot of novels about Pakistan are about the rich and socially elite, so to find this book which shows you a flip side to that, the slums and the poverty was particularly interesting. Perhaps it is a little more of what you might expect Pakistan to be like, yet it is about sex, cultural, religious and social limitations, therefore provides much more than what you might expect.
Set in Pakistan it shows you the sordid and unpleasant realities of life in the brothel town of an Islamic country. Yet it has a sense of optimism or practicality about it. The characters are trapped by their positions and therefore you see them desiring more yet the class and religious restritions they are bound by mean they can never move up in society.
There are moments of pure hilarity in this book (the melodramatic antics of Maha) and moments where you think 'this is so sad', and it's this balance which makes you care for the characters and want to find out more about them. You also gain a sense of Brown's own frustrations at the thinking of these Pakistani women, for example when they call one another 'whore' yet this is the very thing which they find insulting in turn, or when they pity Brown for being a single woman.
It is a documentary which absorbs you fully into the slums of Hira Mandi and at the end I found myself wondering what happens next...
A lot of novels about Pakistan are about the rich and socially elite, so to find this book which shows you a flip side to that, the slums and the poverty was particularly interesting. Perhaps it is a little more of what you might expect Pakistan to be like, yet it is about sex, cultural, religious and social limitations, therefore provides much more than what you might expect.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is not the type of book I normally read - I was given it by a friend and I was turning the pages like a thriller to see what would happen next to Maha and her daughters! Louise Brown spent 4 years with Maha and her family in order to understand women's experience in the red-light district of Lahore in Pakistan. The journal type narrative recounts everyday happenings in the lives of people Ms Brown encountered during her stay - you get to meet all kinds of people, many of them struggling simply to survive. It's funny, sad, occasionally critical, mostly sympathetic and fascinating. I now truly understand how a mother could nuture and promote her daughter's career in prostitution. Totally absorbing and illuminating.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent
Excellent service and excellent book. Takes you back to Lahore from where i am from. Beautifully described and illustrated. A must buy book.
Published 17 months ago by Shehzad Hussain
some interesting insights but questionable purpose
The story is told in the present tense, presumably to create a feeling of immediacy but, at the same time, is told with over the top, forced detachment, Occasional glimpses into... Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2009 by I. K. Montgomery
observing a culture
Louise Brown lived amongst the prostitutes of Heera Mandi,Lahore,Pakistan.
This was to be a serious study of their lives and Louise intended to be an observer,only. Read more
This was to be a serious study of their lives and Louise intended to be an observer,only. Read more
Published on 17 Feb 2009 by palace pier
one word to describe this book.... WOW!
All I can say is that this book is a must read, its beautifully written and has deeply influenced me. Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2007 by james booth
Excellent book
This is so much more than just a book about the prostitutes of Lahore. Louise Brown's book takes the reader beyond the usual fleeting superficial surface offered by most observers... Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2007 by C. Wilkinson
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