In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land.  Refined, sensuous, by turns humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed. Read what the critics had to say about In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Nawabdin Electrician • Saleema • Provide, Provide • About a Burning Girl • In Other Rooms, Other Wonders • Our Lady of Paris • Lily • A Spoiled Man

AWARDS

• 2009 Story Prize Winner
• Pulitzer Prize Finalist
• National Book Award Finalist
• LA Times Book Prize Finalist
• Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize

WATCH

Daniyal Mueenuddin reads a short section from “About a Burning Girl”, a story included in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders:

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The first edition of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was published by W. W. Norton & Company in February 2009. The book became available in paperback and as an ebook in November 2009.

Press

Named one of the Top Ten Books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly, TIME, New Statesman, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, and The Economist.

“Reading Daniyal Mueenuddin’s mesmerizing first collection is like watching a game of blackjack, the shrewd players calculating their way beyond their dealt cards in an attempt to beat the dealer…In this labyrinth of power games and exploits, Mueenuddin instills luminous glimmers of longing, loss and, most movingly, unfettered love.”
- THE NEW YORK TIMES

“The eight short stories of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s enchanting debut are dreamlike, illuminating contemporary Pakistan’s societal contradictions in prose as clear and serene as the contradictions themselves are subtle and tumultuous. “
– BOSTON GLOBE

“His prose, never flashy, neither sentimentalizes the poor nor demonizes the rich, but noses out the humanity of each. It is probably a mistake to lavish too much praise on a first book, but given the power and beauty and deeply affecting quality of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, I can’t stop myself from wondering if Pakistan has found its Chekhov.“ 
– MIAMI SUN-SENTINAL

"Much as Isaac Bashevis Singer recreated the lost Jewish shtetl in many of his short stories, Mr. Mueenuddin unveils a nuanced world where social status and expectations are understood without being stated, and where poverty and the desire to advance frame each critical choice.”
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Daniyal Mueenuddin’s masterful debut collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, reveals a modern Pakistan that is as beautiful as it is brutal…[His] work evokes 19th-century Russian masters like Turgenev and Gogol, along with the Southern Gothic tradition of Faulkner and Truman Capote…Mueenuddin is a prodigiously talented writer, capable of imagining the inner lives of Punjabi aristocrats and their servants with equal sympathy, precision and power.” 
– THE DAILY BEAST

"An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience.”
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Astonishing…reveals a writer who seems to combine the the intimate rural rootedness and gentle humour of RK Narayan with the literary sophistication and stylishness of Jhumpa Lahiri. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is quite unlike anything recently published on the Indian side of the border, and throws the gauntlet down to a new generation of Indian writers. For the first time in this part of Asia, there is serious competition out there.”
- FINANCIAL TIMES

Named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2009 by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and included amongst the Best Debut Fiction of 2009 on NPR and the Best of the Best on The Daily Beast.

More press coverage can be found tagged on Pinboard.

More information about In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.