Why a Booktrail?
2000: An essential guide to marriage, class and sisterhood in modern-day Pakistan.
Unmarriageable
What you need to know before your trail
Alys Binat has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Although she knows that many of her students won’t finish their education before dropping out to marry, Alys still hopes to inspire them to dream of more than what’s expected. When an invitation arrives for the biggest wedding their town has seen in years, Mrs Binat excitedly prepares her five unmarried daughters to hunt for prospective husbands. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s eldest sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad Bingla. But his friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal – and Alys begins to realise that Darsee’s manner may hide a very different man to the one she judged at first sight.
Travel Guide
Travel BookTrail style around a visit to Lahore, Pakistan
This is a visit of a Jane Austen flavour but Pakistan style! The five Binat sisters in this novel live in Dilipabad, a small and fictional Pakistani town just across the Indian border from Amritsar. Amiritsar happens to be the setting of the Bollywood film ‘Bride and Prejudice.’ So plenty of Austen flavour this side of the world!
“It was a truth universally acknowledged, Alys suddenly thought with a smile, that people enter our lives in order to recommend reads.”
“Reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.”
A few places of note in Lahore when they go:
Lahore -Shalimar Garden
This formal, terraced 17th-century Mughal garden is 16 hectares large & surrounded by walls.
Badshahi Mosque
Large Mughal-style mosque built in the 1670’s in red sandstone with 4 towering minarets.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Unmarriageable
Destination: Pakistan, Lahore, ‘Dilipabad’ Author/Guide: Soniah Kamal Departure Time: 2000
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