KARACHI: On the eve of the 18th death anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Lightstone Publishers has announced the publication of Farhatullah Babar’s new book She Walked into the Fire.

Being the speechwriter and spokesperson for Ms Bhutto from 1988 until her assassination in 2007, Mr Babar’s memoir is more than a biography. It is an insider’s political account, with tantalising disclosures and sharp insights into her leadership under siege from patriarchal power, military dominance, deep-state intrigues, ideological opponents and manipulations thousands of miles away in a foreign land, said a press release issued here on Friday.

This is the third book published this year by Mr Babar, following his earlier works, The Zardari Presidency: Now It Must Be Told and Beyond the Bomb: Munir Ahmad Khan and Pakistan’s Nuclear Odyssey, both also published by Lightstone Publishers.

The biography unfolds with piercing clarity the previously unpublished accounts of some telling events from her two terms in office, her leadership of the party, eight years in agonising exile, her reflections on how to deal with the Bonaparte’s and reining in the deep state, her near-quitting of politics and her tragic final return to Pakistan.

It also recounts in graphic detail a secret backchannel project launched through covert intermediaries in December 2001 in the US to, as claimed by protagonists at the time, restore democracy in the country and pave the way for ending her exile, but actually turned out to be an attempt at redrawing Pakistan’s democratic roadmap by a foreign power.

The memoir makes public for the first time a note left by Benazir, asking the author to share this truth with the world when the time is right. “That time is now. This book will shake the powerful and inspire the powerless. It is a memoir that history demanded but power never wanted told.”

She Walked into the Fire will be available in bookstores nationwide in the second week of January 2026.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2025