NEW YORK. June 16: Journalist Mohammed Hanif’s first novel “A Case of Exploding Mangoes”, a fictional account of events leading to the assassination of President Gen Ziaul Haq, has garnered exceptional critical praise in the media here since its release two weeks ago.

In a critique written for the New York Times Book Review, author Robert Macfarlane observes: “... Mangoes” is set in the months before and the days after the crash. Far from coming to a conclusion about the cause of Gen Zia’s death, Hanif gleefully thickens the stew of conspiracy theories, introducing at least six other possible suspects, including a blind woman under sentence of death, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner, a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms and a junior trainee officer in the Pakistan Air Force named Ali Shigri, who is also the novel’s main narrator.”

“Ali is irreverent, lazy and raspingly sardonic, and his obvious fictional predecessor is Joseph Heller’s Yossarian. Indeed, like “Catch-22,” “A Case of Exploding Mangoes” is best understood as a satire of militarism, regulation and piety. Much of Hanif’s novel is set in the Pakistan Air Force Academy.

Among them are Lieutenant Bannon, known as Loot, a languorous American drill instructor who douses himself in Old Spice, and Uncle Starchy, the squadron’s laundryman, who — as we witness in a fine scene — self-medicates with snake venom, using a live krait as his syringe.

Gen Zia’s fate is one of Pakistan’s two great political mysteries, the other being the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, says Macfarlane.

Steadily and surely the book is making its way up the best sellers list.