SAI - News

On Tuesday, 25 October 2016, 8 pm, Pakistani author Omar Shahid Hamid will present his crime novel "The Prisoner" in a talk with Martin Gieselmann, Executive Secretary of the South Asia Institute, at the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Institut Heidelberg (DAI).

His thriller taking place in Karachi which is now available in German entitled "Der Gefangene" was an international success. His novel provides an insight to the Pakistani society. Hamid tells the story of the abduction of an American journalist in Karachi and reveals the complex political entanglements in a country crushed by fundamentalism and corruption.

Content:

On an unusually cold December evening in Karachi, American journalist Jon Friedland is kidnapped from one of the city's poshest neighbourhoods. His captors plan to post a video of his execution on Christmas Day. The kidnapping has come at a bad time, embarrassing the Pakistani government in front of their US allies. The clock is ticking. Will the police and Intelligence Agencies recover Friedman alive?

The story careens through the streets of Karachi, taking the reader into an all too real world of jihadis, corrupt police officers, and bloodthirsty political henchmen - all placed together in a city where no one is quite what they seem.