Alice Bhatti has just come out of prison and is looking for a second chance. Shea’s hungry, tough, and full of fight, but being a Catholic choohra in Karachi means she also needs good luck. A lot of it. Alicea’s prayers are answered when she gets a job as junior nurse at the Sacred Heart Hospital, a squalid public hospital full of shoot-out victims and homeless drug addicts. There she meets Teddy Butt, a trigger happy, ex-body builder and a part- time goon for the police.

The two could not be further apart and thatâ’s why they fall in lovea Teddy with sudden violence, Alice in cautious hope. How will their unlikely romance end? In A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif tore into the corruption of the army and General Ziaa’s dictatorship; in this novel he draws a dark and compelling portrait of Pakistan today where killers fall in love and lovers are forced to make impossible choices.

Written with savage humour and in sizzling prose, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tour de force from one of the most brilliant young writers