The Wandering Falcon  (English, Paperback, Ahmad Jamil)

The Wandering Falcon is set years before the Taliban’s rise in the forbidden regions where the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran meet. It gives the reader a look at the honour-bound and highly traditional culture that exists in those areas.

Summary Of The Book

The Wandering Falcon is a tale of compassion, timeless wisdom and great insight. It follows a young lad, known as Tor Baz or the black falcon, who spends his days loitering between tribes. Moving between tribes he meets all kinds of people, men fighting for various causes and women who stand to lose everything lest they break the rigid laws set by the society.

The novel is set in a time before the Taliban came to power and in the tribal lands that are today known for drone attacks, conflict and a region where many conspiracies are hatched. In these areas exists a culture that is extremely stringent and honour bound. The Wandering Falcon is an attempt by the author to capture all of this and present it to the reader. The author portrays a world that swings between the extremes of love and cruelty, survival and hardship with a refreshing perspective. The book talks about a world that is fragile and unforgiving, but is at the same time gradually changing in line with the modern world.

The Wandering Falcon is filled with stories that give the readers a perspective into the culture that exists in the regions close to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The story in the chapter titled "The Sins of the Mother" speaks of an honour killing where a couple is killed for eloping together. “Sale Completed” is an account of a woman who has been abducted, but manages to escape and return home only to find that her husband has remarried and his new wife has borne him a son which has raised the new wife in prestige. Unable to bear the insults of the new wife and her mother-in-law, the woman opts to be sold to a brothel. The line where the person who closes the sale says that she did so to prefer the humiliation of total strangers rather than by the ones she knows, talks a lot about the woman’s despair.

The Wandering Falcon was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize.

About Jamil Ahmad

Jamil Ahmad is an award winning Pakistani author.

Ahmad was born in 1931 in Jalandhar. In his past, he has served in the Civil Service of Pakistan. He was also a Political Agent in Chaghi, Quetta, Malakand and Khyber, and a Commissioner in Swat and Dera Ismail Khan. Before and during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he was a minister in the Pakistan embassy at Kabul. Ahmad also served the Tribal Development Corporation as its Chairman. His last assignment was that of the Pakistan Government’s Chief Secretary in Balochistan. He currently lives with his wife in Islamabad.