Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Author: Mohammed Hanif

Price: £12.99

out of stock

Published by: Jonathan Cape

Date Available: 07 October 2011

Tweet

All of our books have clear protective, removable film on the dustwrapper and are packed professionally in bubble wrap and a box for shipping so that they reach you in perfect condition

 

Details

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments are looking for a miracle, and Alice Bhatti is looking for a job.

Alice is a candidate for the position of junior nurse, grade 4. It is only a few weeks since her release from Borstal. She has returned to her childhood home in the French Colony, where her father, recently retired from his position as chief janitor, continues as part-time healer, and full-time headache for the local church. It seems she has inherited some of his gift. With guidance from the working nurse’s manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice brings succour to the thousands of patients littering the hospital’s corridors and concrete courtyard. In the process she attracts the attention of a lovesick patient, Teddy Bunt, apprentice to the nefarious ‘Gentleman Squad’ of the Karachi police. They fall in love; Teddy with sudden violence, Alice with cautious optimism. Their love is unexpected, but the consequences are not.

Alice soon finds that her new life is built on foundations as unstable as those of her home. A Catholic snubbed by other Catholics, who are in turn hated by everyone around them, she is also put at risk by her husband, who does two things that no member of the Gentlemen Squad has ever done – fall in love with a working girl, and allow a potentially dangerous suspect to get away. Can Teddy and Alice ever live in peace? Can two people make a life together without destroying the very thing that united them? It seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse...

Filled with wit, colour and pathos, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a glorious story of second chances, thwarted ambitions and love in unlikely places, set in the febrile streets of downtown Karachi. It is the remarkable new novel from the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

Additional Information

Cover Type: Hardback

ISBN: 978-0224082051

Also from this Author

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

People who ordered this also ordered...

The Holy Thief - Leather Bound Edition

The Executioner

To Kill a Tsar

Bleed for Me

The Leopard's Wife

Imperial Bedrooms

The Illusion of Murder

Room (Orange Prize short-listed 2011)

I Am Number Four - Signed, Numbered & Slipcase Edition - Exclusive to Goldsboro Books

The Finkler Question

Lowlife - Exclusive Signed and Numbered Edition of 150 copies

Young Sherlock Holmes1: Death Cloud - Goldsboro Exclusive Hardback

Birth of a Killer

The Fort

The Lost Kings

The Fools' Crusade

Death on the Marais

Nourishment