Daniyal Mueenuddin and the making of 20th-century Pakistan

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s epic debut novel is an excoriating portrait of corruption and class divisions in Pakistan. Spanning several decades, from 1955 to 2013, the narrative follows the intertwined lives of a wealthy landowning family and their staff. An acclaimed short story writer whose collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (2009) was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize and the National Book award, Mueenuddin is a masterful storyteller, bringing together beautifully realised characters and a compelling plot.

The book is divided into four self-contained sections, with the first (The Golden Boy) introducing the readers to Bayazid, also known as Yazid. Abandoned as a small child on the streets of Rawalpindi in the mid-1950s, he is adopted by Karim Khan, the kindly owner of a curry stall, and becomes his apprentice. Yazid later falls for his best friend’s sister but, rebuffed by the family’s maid for daring to cross social boundaries, he retreats to Azad Kashmir and tries his luck as a smuggler. He eventually settles down as a chauffeur for Colonel Atar, “landowner, industrialist, till recently one of Bhutto’s backers, and who had now switched alliances to the new man [General Zia-Ul-Haq]”.

In Muscle, set in 1988, the colonel’s nephew Rustom returns from studying in America to run the family farm. He finds himself out of his depth, unable to manage the thefts and tensions of the feudal social structure. He is initially reluctant “to show himself as an old-school landlord” capable of violently “rearranging teeth and dismounting knees and elbows”. After the villagers beat an aged employee, Rustom enlists thugs to restore order through brutal intimidation.

We glimpse the cold calculation of his cousin Hisham in the third part, The Clean Release, when the latter recalls how he met his wife Shahnaz while studying at Dartmouth with his younger brother, Nessim. Hisham seduced Shahnaz, originally Nessim’s girlfriend, during a camping trip together in the mountains. Mueenuddin delights in exquisite, lush prose and evocative turns of phrase: Shahnaz describes her love for Hisham as “like a public building… compared to the unvisited ruin of her season’s love for Nessim, that first love, abandoned and picturesque”.

The final section, which gives the book its title, focuses on Saqib, a bright young servant boy, the gardener’s son, whose fatal flaw – “the strategic and the sentimental were fluidly intermixed” – indeed proves his undoing. Mentored by Yazid, now a trusted member of the Atar household, Saqib works his way up in Hisham and Shahnaz’s estimation to become a munshi (estate manager), only to throw it all away in an ill-advised plot to siphon off money from the family business.

Mueenuddin, who lives between Oslo and his farm in Pakistan’s South Punjab, clearly knows this milieu, immersing us in a world where property and influence are everything, while old retainers such as Saqib’s father continue to be “bent to obedience”. Yet through Saqib’s ambition, we sense that a new order is emerging; had he been more ruthless, he might have succeeded in his machinations. Mueenuddin offers a profound meditation on identity, class and privilege in a deeply conservative and patriarchal society.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £17.09. Delivery charges may apply

Photograph by Roger Wood/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images