Note by Maha Khan Phillips

Dear Reader,

The idea for Beautiful from this Angle came to me while I was at a newsagents, trawling through the newspapers, in London. Every single headline screamed something negative about Islam, whether it was the Muslim taxi driver that refused to let a guide dog into his cab, or the burkha-clad teacher whose students could not understand her, or terrifying-terrorising mad extremists breeding equally terrifying-terrorising students who, the paper warned, would blow the British sky high. It struck me then, that there was a reason that all my foreign friends and family were convinced that in Pakistan we lived in the Dark Ages, that all women were silenced and oppressed, and that it was only men who could be evil. I decided it would be fun to turn the idea on its head, in a light-hearted manner, to look at the craziness that is the media and it’s approach to Islam and to Pakistan.

Beautiful from this Angle is a satire about three well heeled Karachi girls who film a fake documentary about an honour killing, anxious to cash in on Western stereotypes. Then a real terrorist is found where the documentary is filmed, and suddenly, the girls find fame. They each take a different path in response to what is happening around them.  In the novel, the  gullible Western media is taking advantage of people, but, equally, the media is being taken advantage of. The book is, I hope, funny, and dark. I hope that those who read it will find it so!

With best wishes

Maha

Maha will be reading from her book & signing copies at Liberty Books next week. Please click here for more details.