Fatima Bhutto uses fiction to tell stories of women

Pakistani poet and writer Fatima Bhutto's fiction debut 'The Shadow of the Crescent Moon' draws stories and experiences from her travels as a journalist. "When I was a journalist, all the little things that didn't fit into articles, all the little moments you have with people, those stayed with me, and those are what came into the book," she said after the launch of her book in Chennai on Sunday evening.

Set in the midst of issues facing Pakistan, this politico-religious thriller tells the story of three brothers and two women with elements of Taliban and drone attacks. Mir Ali, a small town in the troubled tribal region of Waziristan, close to the Afghan border, is the epicentre of the story. Though Mir Ali is a real place, in Bhutto's work it is made fictional. "I had travelled a lot while working as a journalist. The surge in this book came from that period of journeys. The scenery or the descriptions come from what I saw," she said. With a powerful last name that spells a political dynasty which has run the vein of Pakistan's conflict, the author was repeatedly questioned about her political nurturing. The audience adoringly told her to enter politics to make a change. Bhutto replied that her work was best through words and that power was a dangerous and overwhelming force. "Power compromises you. I'm one person and it's a massive institution. People are diminished and their values go." she said. She would never trade the freedom she has with her words to be in politics, she added. The author, niece of slain former premier of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, turned novelist with this book. 'Songs of Blood and Sword' her previous work, a memoir, that blamed Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari for the assassination of her father, Mir Murtaza. Bhutto continues to capture suffering and injustice through the lives of the women in her fiction. The book is about women fighting an everyday battle where they are the victims of a bad system. She says the women in her book break stereotypes of the image of Pakistani women and chronicles the sufferings they are put through by fundamentalists, the state, the society and their men. "The women, as much as they have suffered violence at different phases of their lives, are strong, independent-minded. They use their voice regardless of the consequences."