Book review 'Born to be Hanged': Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by the book

The first half of the book mostly focuses on Bhutto's impassioned speeches at the United Nations, especially after the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan wars

Born to be Hanged

Political biography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Syeda Hameed

Rupa

264 pages, Rs 500

Writing a political biography of a high-profile and controversial politician who was hanged to death nearly four decades ago is a challenging task. The job becomes much tougher when the writer is Indian and the subject is Pakistan’s former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the complex and contradictory politician, master orator, hero to some and villain to others. Perhaps it’s no surprise that it took author Syeda Hameed 20 years to pen this profile.
 
The challenge before Ms Hameed, once member of the erstwhile Planning