Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan

The volume traces the life of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from the colourful days of his feudal ancestors to his imprisonment and hanging at the hands of a military dictatorship. Bhutto was a charismatic and contradictory man. He climbed to the heights of power with amazing swiftness, winning a seat in the central Cabinet of Pakistan at the unprecedented age of thirty. The author weaves Pakistan’s turbulent politics and repeated wars with India together with Bhutto’s ambitious manoeuvring, tracing his rise to Foreign Minister, the founding of his own political party, and finally leadership of the nation. The story of Bhutto’s sometimes inspiring, sometimes quixotic career is a fascinating one, and the author tells it brilliantly, through Bhutto’s triumphant years in the mid-1970s, the military coup in 1977, and his treacherous imprisonment and execution in 1979. The author’s intensively researched, engagingly written account captures the scheming, the grandeur, and the contradictions of one of modern history’s most fascinating figures.