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Pakistan: A Hard Country Paperback – 23 Feb 2012

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Anatol Lieven (Author)
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Anatol Lieven (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 34 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 592 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (23 Feb. 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0141038241
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141038247
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.8 x 20.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 170,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Superb ... Few writers offer the insight and deep knowledge that Lieven has of a country critical for the West but one often caricatured by the media and rarely understood by Western policy makers ... Timely and compelling (Maleeha Lodhi)

This is a wonderful book, full of learning, wisdom, humour and common sense (Peter Oborne Daily Telegraph)

One cannot give Lieven enough credit ... The book seamlessly flows with historical analysis, anthropological investigation, and painstaking contextualisation ... It is both grand in its scholastic description and in its journalistic flair (Ahmad Ali Khalid Dawn)

A finely researched blend of the nation's 64-year history ... Lieven's feat lies in his remarkable, flesh-and-blood portrait of the nation ... this nuanced analysis should be read, and learned from (The Independent)

By far the most insightful survey of Pakistan I have read in recent years ... a vital book ... detailed and nuanced (Mohsin Hamid New York Review of Books)

Lieven captures the richness of the place wonderfully. His book has the virtues of both journalism and scholarship (The Economist)

An important corrective to the monolithic view of Pakistan ... fresh and deeply informed (Patrick French Mail on Sunday)

A brilliantly articulated and researched argument ... Lieven is a wonderful writer. There are frequent moments of dark humour ... and descriptions that a novelist might envy (Kamila Shamsie The Times)

Everybody nowadays seems to take a view on Pakistan. Very few know what they're talking about. Anatol Lieven is that rare observer ... Pakistan: A Hard Country ... fills a large gap in our understanding (Edward Luce, author of 'In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India')

The publication of Pakistan: A Hard Country could not be more timely ... illuminating as well as entertaining (The Spectator)

With patience and determination, Lieven observes and records all aspects of the curiosity otherwise known as Pakistan ... A sweeping and insightful narrative (Mohammed Hanif The New York Times)

About the Author

Anatol Lieven is Professor of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King's College, London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He was previously a journalist, who reported from South Asia, the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe for The Times (London) and other publications. His books include Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (1998); America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004); and Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World (with John Hulsman) (2006).

Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsA brilliant introduction to Pakistan
By S. Rafiq on 28 Mar. 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
As someone that gets most of their ideas on Pakistan from the media - I generally would have a negative understanding of Pakistan. this book explains how modern Pakistan works and what the issues are in the present day. It explains the politics and military structures to a T.

I would give it five stars but the author's writing style involves a lot of parentheses which I found disrupted my reading flow.

If you want to know about Pakistan, buy this book, it will open your eyes. You may even fall in love with Pakistan.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA must read
By Ian on 11 July 2011
Format: Hardcover
This is an excellent book - well researched, authoritative, dense but readable. The "hard" in the title is multifaceted. It refers to the facts that Pakistan is hard to understand, hard to live in, hard to deal with, hard to be optimistic about its future......
I was left with the image of a square, slightly tipped so that the corners are at different heights.
On top, and most significant, is social conservatism through patronage, kinship, nepotism, corruption and something akin to "feudalism" (the inverted commas indicate its difference from the European model. In Pakistan it is not all land based or ancestral). Next in terms of significance is the army, possibly the only coherent and reasonably well run organisation in the country. It stands apart from most of the "feudal" and other problems but from time to time steps in and takes the reins of power. Forms of Islam are the third corner but these are fragmented and despite the problems they present this means that there is little threat of an Islamic takeover. At the bottom comes Government, ineffectually coloured by the kinship and Islamic corners.
Pakistan is an artificial concept, inadvisably created as West Pakistan (now Pakistan) was combined with East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to solve the Muslims in India problem. Following Muslim migrations out of India the misadventure continued with war between the two halves of Pakistan which split into separate countries. Hostility between Pakistan and India remains unabated. There are probable Pakistan Army links with the Afghanistan Taleban fostered as a strategic lever against India. An interesting point made almost as an aside is that there is little sense of nationality in Pakistan and that this is common in "countries" without a national education system.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsCool
By B. R. Ghafoor on 9 Dec. 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a very clear book and I would recommend it.

The book would also have been more enjoyable if amazon paid taxes properly in the UK.
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5.0 out of 5 starsMY ENEMY'S ENEMY'S ENEMY IS .... MY ENEMY!
By Diacha on 27 May 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is excellent as well as timely. It is full of clear thinking, colorful detail and rich anecdotes about a country whose fate is critical to the West.

Anatole Lieven is a former Times journalist and a professor at Kings College. He has lived and travelled extensively in Pakistan over twenty years and interviewed hundreds of Pakistanis from all walks of life including many current and former military and intelligence personnel. He writes more like a journalist than an academic, in what might be termed a literate, colloquial style. ("The Pathans...(are like)... eighteenth century Scots without the alcohol').

"Pakistan: A Hard Country" is teeming with voices and vignettes, a mini metaphor for the country itself. Thus, for example, we witness a traditional pig hunt hosted by Sardar Mumtaz, scion of the Bhutto clan (the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the unhalalable?) and join an Anglican service in St Johns Cathedral in Peshawar where a few beleaguered Christians sing hymns beneath plaques commemorating Scottish and English soldiers killed by tribal insurgents one hundred and fifty years before. We meet such people as the moderate Islamist Colonel Abdul Qayyum ("The Pakistani army has been a nationalist army with an Islamic look"), Dr Shamim Gul, a grandmotherly police surgeon who takes a futile stand against honour killings ("sometimes the bodies fall to pieces and I have to put them back together') and Shehzad, a "Chekhovian steward" who almost drives his mistress mad ("What can I do? He harasses me unmercilessly but he has been with my father for ever."), Afzad Khan, an ANP politician whose nose seems "to be growing in...Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsAn Ideal Primer
By RJP on 15 July 2012
Format: Paperback
'Pakistan: A Hard Country' is perhaps the ideal title for Lieven's book. It is not a short and sharp journalistic account, nor is it a testing academic volume: Lieven writes as a social scientist, historian and anthropologist, stitching together an intricate picture based as much on the author's personal interactions and experiences in Pakistan as it is on archival sources. It is a solid and eminently readable primer on Pakistan's quagmire politics, but one written with an evident personal passion for the subject - highly recommended.

(The 2012 paperback edition also includes a brief afterword covering the killing of Bin Laden and its effects on US-Pakistani relations).
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3.0 out of 5 starsclimb every mountain
By munchkin on 5 July 2011
Format: Hardcover
This is a very long - indeed overlong book, at 500 pages, which not that many people, I suspect, will bother to plough through. It should have been edited down a lot. There's a lot of annoying repetition, and time and again the reader is told that you have to wait until a later chapter to understand a particular point. The absence of any maps is another annoying and glaring omission as other reviewers have pointed out. A map would have been far more instructive than the pictures of politicians etc that adorn the book, none of which are referred to in the text anyway.

That said, for those who do persevere the book does have some interesting and revealing things to say about Pakistan. I have no previous knowledge of the country, and the discussions of the social and political structure of the country, and relations with the USA/West were very instructive. In particular, the author offers a clear explanation of the way that most Pakistanis feel abandonned by the USA, which, from being a close ally and supporter in the Cold War period, no longer sees the same need to support Pakistan to the same degree, and has become much more pro-India, becasue India is seen as an ally against China...... The depth of anti-American feeling in Pakistan was a surprise to me, and goes some way to helping situate recent developments within the UK, where there is a large Pakistan population.

Apart from that, the book is well written, if a bit repetitive. It relies heavily on anecdote, and has some questionable assertions - that Pakistan is one of the most equal societies in the world. I find that difficult to believe. The gini coefficient as calculated may be low, indicating low inequality, but how good is the data used in the calculations??Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsHighly recommended.

I've not finished the book yet but it's been my go to book whenever I have a moment spare. Fantastic read and written in a way to keep the reader interested in the different facets... Read more

Published 16 days ago by Richard Ellis
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Long book! really hard to finish it!

Published 3 months ago by Imran Syed Zaidi
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant !

As a second generation British Pakistani this book taught me more about the country of my parents birth than they had ever done . Read more

Published 5 months ago by Ruki
5.0 out of 5 starsA very good read ....

Very good read ..... Anatol Lieven has got it right, how society works in Pakistan.
Students of social sciences shall find wealth of knowledge for their subjects. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Sajid
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very factual

Published 10 months ago by Dr Zakila. Feroze-Din
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent briefing on Pakistan

Really good on Pakistan - a great read for anyone who needs to understand this country ..and even includes relative praise for Sharia law

Published 10 months ago by C. S. D. Robertson
5.0 out of 5 starsHis account is like that of a person who has actually lived their ...

His account is like that of a person who has actually lived their and presents an accurate picture of a complicated country

Published 12 months ago by K Saeed
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Anatol Leiven has wrote a very good book.

Published 15 months ago by Yaseen Mohammed
4.0 out of 5 starsgood read

this is a great introduction to pakistans demography,religion and regional differences.it ponders the role of the military,judges,lawyer,police. Read more

Published 16 months ago by m. dosa
5.0 out of 5 starsRelevant. Informative.

Covers the subject from all angles, written with great insight. Very relevant read in today's world. Anything but dry with numerous humorous episodes and personal encounters.

Published 20 months ago by katya belaia

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