Fatima Bhutto gives a coruscating account of the recent history of Pakistan and the major role of the Bhuttos within it. Driven by the murder of her beloved father Mir Murtaza she tells about the first democratically elected Prime Minister in Pakistan , her Grandfather Zulfikar Al Bhutto . Zulfikar was deposed during his first term by a General of the Army Zia and later executed. Zulfikars sons, Mir Murtaza and Shahnawaz left for exile to ferment an armed revolution in response. After Zia was killed in airplane crash Benzaire Bhutto positioned herself to become the first female Asian prime minister. In what should have been a restoration of democracy and human rights instead became decent into corruption political violence and autocracy that included a bitter and ultimately lethal persecution of her brother Mir Murtaza. Fatima is candid especially about the faults of her Grandfather as prime minister, the political prisoners and the beginnings of the erosion of women rights and dictatorship of Zia and inexplicably the deeper corruption and political violence meted out under Benzaire's rule. This is a tremendous book of courage where she has managed to present the facts as an outside champion for liberty as her father was but also an insider in this complex political dynasty. It is painful to read her as she describes her aunt Benzaire's life and death. The complexity of the emotion as another Bhutto is killed and her persecutor is removed. There are only moments when I felt her own self criticism of naivety and hagiography were true. She doesn't see the extent that all the Bhuttos were feted by the west. All the Bhuttos winning scholarships to Harvard and Oxford on merit doesn't seem credible. Her uncle's death Shahnawaz by suicide is not reasonably in question. A thunderous family row, drink and accessible poison make this by far the likely explanation. She also underestimates the brutalization of Benzaire in Pakistan while the brothers were posturing as revolutionaries. What happens to the brutalised is they become brutalizes in turn. This doesn't excuse but explains to an extent the creature Benzaire became. Her father's decision to apparently shoulder the opposition to Benzaire/Zinardi rule appeared to be ill advised. These small caveats aside this is an important well told story that needed to be told. I was tempted to read Benazaire's Daughter of the East autobiography again but this is enough time for one family and I think Fatima would agree.