Unmarriageable

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

This famous first line by Jane Austen is the launching point for Sonia Kamal’s novel, Unmarriageable, a Pride and Prejudice retelling in Pakistan.  In a modern-day 2000’s culture, many Pakistani girls marry young or find love through family connections and arranged marriages.  This is no different for the five Binat daughters.  Jena and Alys, the oldest two daughters, are in their early thirties and seen as closing in on their marriage expiration dates, until the day the Binat family receives a coveted invitation to a blow-out wedding in their small Pakistani town.  Mrs. Binat believes this is a gift to launch her daughters into the arms of eligible bachelors.  Enter Fahad “Bungles” Bingla and his best friend Valentine Darsee.  As Bungles falls head over heels for Jena, Valentine’s stand-offish manner rubs Alys the wrong way, but she finds herself thrown into situations with him again and again.  With Bungles’ interfering sisters—Hammy and Sammy—and Valentine’s disapproval, Alys can see that Jena has a hard road to climb if she wants to keep her demur reputation.

This book is very much in the same vein as the original—the conniving mother, the love-at-first-sight, the misinterpretations, the family dynamics—just set in Pakistani culture.  Having never been to Pakistan and not read much literature from there, it was nice to read it from a Pakistani author’s perspective.  She did a wonderful job showing how themes bridge cultures and how classics can be reimagined with the same essence as the original.  Kamal says it best in her acknowledgements at the end:

“In reading literature through a Pakistani lens, it seemed to me that all cultures were concerned with the same eternal questions and that people were more similar to one another than they were different.  As Alys Binat says in Unmarriageable, ‘Reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.’”