Just how that can possibly be true you won't understand until the ending of Shigri's dark, funny confession. It's not that he lies. He just leaves things out. He's the leader of the Air Force's silent drill squad with a hidden agenda all his own, a rascal narrator who always keeps you guessing, who knows far more than he reveals. Every so often the reader gets a startling glimpse of another reality operating under the military decorum of the novel's surface--as when Shigri and his roommate are suddenly accused of having sex together, and the reader knows nothing about it.
There's a lot more the reader doesn't know.
Why was the narrator's father, Colonel Shigri, found hanging from the ceiling fan by his own bedsheet? What exactly is going on between Shigri and his roommate, Obaid, who mysteriously vanishes and then incriminates his best friend? Does Shigri know why a plane is missing from the base? What role does the unjustly imprisoned woman named Blind Zainab play in all this political scheming, and in particular, why oh why do we care about a crow who overhears her curse and periodically blows back into the story? Junior Officer Shigri knows the answer to all these questions. He's just not telling until he feels like it.
The novel alternates chapters between Shigri's limited, first-person account of the two months and 17 days leading up to the death of General Zia, and a third-person re-creation of General Zia's last days, swept up in confrontations with his wife, his TV celebrity mistress, a spectacular parachuting disaster, and yes, the fateful peregrinations of a certain crow. Just like that crow, the unpredictable plot never flies where you think it's heading in this odd, frequently brilliant, satirical deconstruction of a dictator's last days.--Nick DiMartino