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The Wandering Falcon Jamil Ahmad 9781594488276 Books

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The Wandering Falcon Jamil Ahmad 9781594488276 Books

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad is a story about a people, not a character. Which is why this book is not for everyone, including me. Here’s my review.

If any of you follow my Goodreads feed, you may have noticed that I left a comment wondering if The Wandering Falcon had a plot. I thought this was because I had put the book down for a year and had forgotten everything. But after reading user reviews on Goodreads, it turns out I was right, this book does not have a plot.

And despite having a main character, he is completely irrelevant and not needed to move the book forward.

Tor Baz is our original main character, but his presence in The Wandering Falcon does not weave the random stories together. This is a technique similar to the one Neil Gaiman used in The Sandman series. In Sandman, the lord of dreams makes a cameo in every single story that involves a character dreaming (which is all of them). In this context, having the Sandman as a cameo character, despite being the protagonist, makes sense. He is the lord of dreams.

In The Wandering Falcon, Tor Baz is just a man and not even one with political ambition or even a goal. He is literally, just a man. He’s not trying to find a cure for his ailing wife, he’s not looking for love, he’s not trying to save his country, he’s just a spectator.

That’s because The Wandering Falcon is not a book about characters, or plot, or inner conflict, or character growth. The Wandering Falcon is a story about the nomadic people of the Middle East and Asia. It is a story about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and how their tribal people survive through wars and living on barren mountains.

Civilized society believes that betrothing your daughter is barbaric and cruel. In The Wandering Falcon, a father sells his daughter so that the family can survive and buy food and shelter. If the daughter runs away from her husband, the father must return the money paid for her. This is an awful practice, but to the tribes who live in the mountains, this was as common as withdrawing money from an ATM.

Truthfully, if I had known this book was about nomadic culture, I would not have read it. Reading this was like reading a well-written encyclopedia entry. Great for research, not so much entertainment.
Those who want a story to get lost in need to get lost somewhere else. The Wandering Falcon is a series of unrelated short stories tenuously linked by a non-critical main character.

The prose, however, is excellent. Had it not been for that interesting first chapter, this review would not have existed. The writing conjures great visuals and captures the essence of a people I have never met. This book, is a Norman Rockwell painting of nomads, the people of the desert mountains. And it is because of this reason that the reviews and ratings on this book are mixed.

A lot of people didn’t get it, and until I finished the book and read other reviews, I didn’t get it either. Despite not having a clear plot or character to follow, I found the depictions of nomadic societies utterly fascinating. To best describe the reading experience, it was like going to a museum and having a curator tell you interesting stories not included in the description plaque.

Contrary to what reviewers are saying, The Wandering Falcon is not a bad book, it is a fictional documentary containing a collection of raw footage that is interesting on its own but has no connective tissue linking to the other.

3 out of 5 stars.


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The Wandering Falcon Jamil Ahmad 9781594488276 Books Reviews

The Wandering Falcon indeed wanders - embracing a non-linear style of story-telling while at the same time managing to follow the development of one particular character - Tor Baz. It is simply yet powerfully written - its very simplicity or bare narrative style is indeed a source of much of its power. The brutal existence of life in the hinterlands of Pakistan is made all the more arresting given this style of writing - it is, plainly, as it is - and thus requires a simplicity of style. This is not to say that the story(ies) lack passion or interest - hardly, but that such plainness of style drives home the rough existence of tribal life in Pakistan and its borderlands. But while managing to articulate the rough and often brutal existence suffered by those who call this part of the world home, the book nevertheless humanizes its characters well and draws one in to what might be a better understanding of its people and their lives - not continuing to abstract them or trivialize them as "others". An important piece of literature - especially relevant for our times.
This is a fine, if little known, book written by an author who spent his career in the tribal lands of the Pakistani borders. He chose the medium of fiction to acquaint his readers with the customs, manners and economies of several of the major tribes who live in the mountainous areas of the Pakistan, Iranian and Afghanistan frontiers. His storytelling reveals many of the reasons that these regions have successfully resisted the rule of empires, and indeed, that of the present countries which they occupy. While the book was written in the 1970's, and only published in the last 10-12 years, it goes a long way to help understand the behavior of the present day Taliban and other insurgent movements and why they continue to persist and to defy pacification or defeat. Such an understanding is not easy to come by. This little book does a splendid job of describing cultures and mores very different than our own and the effort is well worth it. The chapters are distinct little stories of their own but there is a unifying theme that ultimately prevails and satisfies. The book is hard to put down, totally original and a fount of information, which makes it well worth the visit.
Jamil Ahmad beautifully describes the remote, at times harsh, landscape and people on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The people living in this area have complicated relation with the state of Pakistan, represented by the army. The book revolves around a boy, who after losing his parents, wanders around from place to place.
The following are few examples of the troubled relation between Pakistani army and the people of this remote area. Bloch tribes are mistreated and killed by the army, when they mistakenly think they are invited to talk. The nomadic tribes wandering from Afghanistan to Pakistan are refused to enter Pakistan and fired upon, after government decides they can't be allowed to roam freely.
It's a book about a remote area of Pakistan little known to the outsiders. The author is in perfect position to tell about this area, having been posted there as a soldier--and does a very good job of doing so in this fictional book. A lot of what the author has to say is not far from reality. More books needs to be written about this little known, isolated geographic area. I would definitely recommend this book to people interested in Baluchistan and tribal areas of Pakistan.
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad is a story about a people, not a character. Which is why this book is not for everyone, including me. Here’s my review.

If any of you follow my Goodreads feed, you may have noticed that I left a comment wondering if The Wandering Falcon had a plot. I thought this was because I had put the book down for a year and had forgotten everything. But after reading user reviews on Goodreads, it turns out I was right, this book does not have a plot.

And despite having a main character, he is completely irrelevant and not needed to move the book forward.

Tor Baz is our original main character, but his presence in The Wandering Falcon does not weave the random stories together. This is a technique similar to the one Neil Gaiman used in The Sandman series. In Sandman, the lord of dreams makes a cameo in every single story that involves a character dreaming (which is all of them). In this context, having the Sandman as a cameo character, despite being the protagonist, makes sense. He is the lord of dreams.

In The Wandering Falcon, Tor Baz is just a man and not even one with political ambition or even a goal. He is literally, just a man. He’s not trying to find a cure for his ailing wife, he’s not looking for love, he’s not trying to save his country, he’s just a spectator.

That’s because The Wandering Falcon is not a book about characters, or plot, or inner conflict, or character growth. The Wandering Falcon is a story about the nomadic people of the Middle East and Asia. It is a story about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and how their tribal people survive through wars and living on barren mountains.

Civilized society believes that betrothing your daughter is barbaric and cruel. In The Wandering Falcon, a father sells his daughter so that the family can survive and buy food and shelter. If the daughter runs away from her husband, the father must return the money paid for her. This is an awful practice, but to the tribes who live in the mountains, this was as common as withdrawing money from an ATM.

Truthfully, if I had known this book was about nomadic culture, I would not have read it. Reading this was like reading a well-written encyclopedia entry. Great for research, not so much entertainment.
Those who want a story to get lost in need to get lost somewhere else. The Wandering Falcon is a series of unrelated short stories tenuously linked by a non-critical main character.

The prose, however, is excellent. Had it not been for that interesting first chapter, this review would not have existed. The writing conjures great visuals and captures the essence of a people I have never met. This book, is a Norman Rockwell painting of nomads, the people of the desert mountains. And it is because of this reason that the reviews and ratings on this book are mixed.

A lot of people didn’t get it, and until I finished the book and read other reviews, I didn’t get it either. Despite not having a clear plot or character to follow, I found the depictions of nomadic societies utterly fascinating. To best describe the reading experience, it was like going to a museum and having a curator tell you interesting stories not included in the description plaque.

Contrary to what reviewers are saying, The Wandering Falcon is not a bad book, it is a fictional documentary containing a collection of raw footage that is interesting on its own but has no connective tissue linking to the other.

3 out of 5 stars.